On 15 June 2004 Gordon Brown passed an important milestone. A politician whose stock after-dinner joke is that there are two types of chancellor, ‘those who fail and those who get out in time’, became the longest-serving holder of the office in the modern era. In beating David Lloyd George's twentieth-century record (7 years and 43 days) in a job whose modern-day pressures far exceed those of the past, Brown's achievement was considerable. Under his economic management the Blair government had avoided economic crises, something that every previous Labour administration had succumbed to. It had maintained, indeed added to, its reputation for economic competence, by achieving the low-inflation stability that too often had eluded governments of all colours. The Treasury's pre-eminence in Whitehall, often in doubt during the Thatcher and Major years, was unquestioned. So was Brown's own political stature. If it was ever open to question during Blair's first term, nobody in the second term seriously challenged the notion that when it came to the Cabinet it was Blair, Brown and the rest some distance behind.

As Brown surveyed the scene in summer 2004, he had much to be satisfied about. Blair was politically weakened and privately doubting his ability to carry on. The chancellor, untainted by Iraq, was getting much of the political credit for the improvement in public services beginning to come through.