The day after his dismissal from the Treasury, Sir Samuel Brittan wrote in the "Financial Times" that history was likely to record him as one of the better Chancellors, citing his structural reforms of taxation, his determination to give priority to securing and maintaining low inflation and the delayed tax increases in his final budget. "He leaves behind an economy with a faster growth rate than that of any other of the main G7 countries and an underlying rate of inflation lower than in most." According to Ruth Lea, writing 12 years later on the factors behind the subsequent performance of the British economy, Lamont had introduced path-breaking macro-economic reforms including inflation targeting and the first steps towards an independent Bank of England and had begun a programme of fiscal consolidation, which transformed the public finances. "These macro economic reforms, along with the Thatcher economic reforms of the 1980s, effectively transformed the British economy."