• Text size
  • Send this article to a friend
  • Print this article

Give and take as the master tactician has the last word

Alf Young: The man who has run the Treasury longer than anyone since Gladstone - and much of the rest of the New Labour mission besides - is no Stalin. But he is, instinctively, intent on having the last word.

Analysis LAST March, one distinguished commentator described Gordon Brown's 10th Budget speech as reminiscent of a Soviet commissar laying out the next five-year plan for tractor production.