CITY AND SUBURBAN
Brown studies how to ginger up the Treasury more vision and a new brass plate
CHRISTOPHER FILDES
The long-lived Tory Government was tottering towards its end. Its Chancellor had played his last card, trying to set off a boom in time for the election, with the bill to come in afterwards. All eyes were already on the plot of the sequel. Where would Mr Brown come into it? He would have to be accommodated. He had put up a strong showing, two years earlier, in the struggle for his party's leadership. Now he wanted to show how the economy ought to be managed — with more vision, more co- ordination, more investment, taking a longer view, delivering the dividend of growth which his party had so many plans for spending. . . . Could the sticky old Treasury deliver this for him? What was he going to do about it? Creative tension was the answer: more tense than creative. He would move into the Treasury building but go in and out through the back door, which would be fitted with a new brass plate, say- ing 'Department of Economic Affairs'. He would be this department's First Secretary. The Treasury would continue to handle the boring routine, but the DEA would be up there on the commanding heights. Bound- ary disputes would be refereed by the Prime Minister, who adjudicated at infor- mal meetings over late-night whiskies. This timing did not bring the best out of the First Secretary, who when tired or emo- tional could not always find his way back from the Treasury to his department. (`Turn left at the door, Secretary of State, and down the corridor — no, left. . . . ') The DEA published its National Plan, com- plete with a check-list for action, but since it started with the answers it preferred and then worked its way back to the plan's ques- tions, the plan's relation to reality was tenu- ous. As much could be said of the DEA itself and, in the end, of Mr Brown.
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