Photo by Allstar Picture Library Ltd/Alamy

The Budget delivered by Gordon Brown on 2 July 1997 was the first by a Labour government for almost two decades. In a broadly positive response in its editorial, the New Statesman sounded a note of warning – that the chancellor was setting small resources against towering ambitions.

It was not exactly a Bacchanalian revel out there on the floor of the Commons. Armed only with a glass of water, Chancellor Gordon Brown delivered his first Budget as if he expected bad light to stop play. Without pausing to make a single joke (the only laughter was when it transpired that the £1.3 billion he has found to repair schools will be parcelled out over five years, rather than one), he took just one hour to lay the foundations of the new welfare state.…