Chancellorship of Gordon Brown

rdf:langString Chancellorship of Gordon Brown

rdf:langString Chancellorship of Gordon Brown

rdf:langString Gordon Brown served as Chancellor of the Exchequer of the United Kingdom from the Labour Party's 1997 general election landslide victory on 2 May 1997 to 27 June 2007, when elevated as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom following the resignation of Tony Blair. Brown was the longest-serving Labour Party Chancellor, and his tenure as chancellor was the second-longest continuous period of office of any Chancellor, surpassed only by Nicholas Vansittart two centuries before. Brown's tenure as Chancellor was marked by major reform of Britain's monetary and fiscal policy architecture, transferring interest rate setting powers to the Bank of England, by a wide extension of the powers of the Treasury to cover much domestic policy and by transferring responsibility for banking supervision to the Financial Services Authority. Brown presided over the longest period of sustained economic growth in British history, but this became increasingly dependent on mounting debt, and part of this growth period started under the preceding Conservative government in 1993. He outlined five economic tests, which resisted the UK adopting the euro currency. Controversial moves included the abolition of advance corporation tax (ACT) relief in his first budget, the sale of UK gold reserves from 1999 to 2002, and the removal in his final budget of the 10% starting rate of personal income tax which he had introduced in 1999. In 2007, Blair resigned as Prime Minister and Labour Leader, and Brown was elected unopposed to replace him. He was succeeded as Chancellor by Alistair Darling the day Brown became Prime Minister. After the end of his premiership in 2010, Brown played a prominent role in the campaign to maintain the union during the 2014 Scottish independence referendum.

rdf:langString Chancellor of the Exchequer

rdf:langString Monarchy of the United Kingdom