Here’s the first in our series of posts looking back over the mistakes made by Brown in his first year as Prime Minister. Later in the week, you’ll be able to vote on which mistake you think is the worst.
21 March, 2007. With the words “A Budget for Britain’s families, for fairness and the future,” Brown had just finished his last Budget speech as Chancellor. Or so it seemed. But like Columbo circling around to ask “just one more thing”, he had another announcement to make:
“With the other decisions I have made today we are able to hold to our pledge made at the election not to raise the basic rate of income tax.
Indeed to reward work, to ensure working families are better off, and to make the tax system fairer, I will from next April cut the basic rate of income tax from 22p down to 20p.
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