In 1997 when it came to office, the first Labour Party Minister for Finance in the history of the State delivered the first surplus in about 30 years. He delivered that because in the previous two years he had been excessively prudent about public expenditure, in Gordon Brown's immortal words. He did not allow public expenditure to run away because he, I and most people on the social democratic left in Europe believed that the best way to deliver good public services was by steady growth in their delivery, not by an election driven frenzy of wasteful expenditure.