Chancellor of the Exchequer his duty to distribute as fairly as he can." The chancellor has considerable control over other departments as it is the Treasury which sets Departmental Expenditure Limits. The amount of power this gives to an individual chancellor depends on his personal forcefulness, his status within his party and his relationship with the prime minister. Gordon Brown, who became chancellor when Labour came into Government in 1997, had a large personal power base in the party. Perhaps as a result, Tony Blair chose to keep him in the same position throughout his ten years as prime minister; making Brown an unusually
Stop of the Exchequer to be serviced at a rate of 8% per annum, and there was also a service charge of £4000 per annum for the management of the loan. The founding of the Bank of England put an end to defaults such as the Great Stop of the Exchequer. From now on, the British Government would never fail to repay its creditors. Kenyon argues that the Stop was a failure simply because it had never been tried in England before. The French and Spanish Governments periodically repudiated their debts without undue difficulty; but from the time of Elizabeth I the English Crown