His tenure 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.

In June 2004, he became the longest continuous serving Chancellor since the Reform Act 1832, passing the figure of 7 years and 43 days set by David Lloyd George (1908–1915).

[10][11][12] Whether this is true or not, the relationship between Blair and Brown was central to the fortunes of New Labour, and they mostly remained united in public, despite reported serious private rifts.

[13] On taking office as Chancellor, Brown gave the Bank of England operational independence in monetary policy, and thus responsibility for setting interest rates.

At the same time, he stripped the Bank of England of its regulatory powers, giving them to the newly created Financial Services Authority, whose board is appointed by the Treasury.

Brown adhered to Labour's 1997 election manifesto pledge not to increase the basic or higher rates of income tax.

[14] Brown increased the tax thresholds in line with inflation, rather than earnings, which rise more quickly during periods of economic growth.

By using a system of sealed bids and only selling a restricted number of licences, they extracted high prices from the telecom operators.

The separate means-testing process for tax credits has been criticised by some as bureaucratic, and in 2003–04 and 2004–05 problems in the system led to overpayments of £2,200,000,000 and £1,800,000,000 respectively.

An OECD report[25] shows UK economic growth averaged 2.7% between 1997 and 2006, higher than the Eurozone's 2.1%, though lower than in any other English-speaking country.

The UK eventually sold about 395 tons of gold over 17 auctions from July 1999 to March 2002, at an average price of about US$275 per ounce, raising approximately US$3,500,000,000.

For economies to flourish, for global poverty to be banished, for the well-being of the world's people to be enhanced – not just in this generation but in succeeding generations – we have a compelling and ever more urgent duty of stewardship to take care of the natural environment and resources on which our economic activity and social fabric depends.

… A new paradigm that sees economic growth, social justice and environmental care advancing together can become the common sense of our age.

[35]In 2000, Brown started a major political row about higher education (referred to as the Laura Spence affair) when he accused the University of Oxford of elitism in its admissions procedures.

With his comments, Brown can arguably be credited with raising widening participation to higher education up the political agenda.

In his budget speech, which he described as a "people's budget", Brown told the House of Commons the government was spending more on debt than education, and set a five-year target to reduce the public deficit, while also announcing that the government would only borrow to invest and public debt would be held at a "prudent and stable level over the economic cycle".

Titled New Ambitions for Britain,[40] and with "prudence as a purpose" as its narrative,[41] Brown's 1998 budget sought to strike a careful balance between maintaining Labour's broad appeal among the Middle England demographic who had voted for the party the previous year, thus helping Tony Blair to become prime minister, while offering help to those on low incomes.

He told the House of Commons: "For decades, under Governments of both parties, the great economic strengths of our country have been undermined by deep-seated structural weaknesses—instability, under-investment, unemployment."

It would be the worst of short-termism to pay ourselves more today at the cost of higher interest rates, fewer jobs and slower growth tomorrow.

"[44] The budget took place during a period of continuing economic expansion, shortly after the launch of the Euro currency on 1 January 1999, and at the tail end of the dot-com bubble.

Child tax credit was to be introduced and employer national insurance contributions cut by 0.5 per cent from April 2001.

[50] The millennium year witnessed Britain's major trading partners, particularly the US and several European economies, enter economic difficulties as part of the early 2000s recession.