Gordon Brown never likes leaving anything to chance. His shirts are always white and once he settles on a new favourite tie, he will stick with it for months on end. The chancellor, who has had more long-term plans than Joseph Stalin, planned his final pre-budget report last Wednesday just as meticulously.

The morning papers had been briefed and the broadcasters squared. Brown, worried that the news later that day from Washington of the Iraq Study Group’s report would wipe his statement off the front pages, had toured the TV and radio studios at breakfast time.

Irritated by the fact that Tony Blair had already eaten into his week by timing the announcement of Britain’s Trident replacement last Monday, he was determined to grab what he regarded as his rightful share of coverage.

The centrepiece of his lunchtime speech to MPs was, as everyone had been forewarned, education. Just as Blair had started his premiership with a commitment to the “three Es” (education, education, education), so Brown was following suit.

Education, he said, “would be our number one priority; education first now and into the future”. There would be special tuition for six-year-olds falling behind in their reading; a bag of books for every five and 11-year-old; and “year-by-year improvements in investment in our schools”.

Most of all, in Brown’s drive to make Britain “the most educated country in the world”, there would, it appeared, be lots of money.

By 2010, the government would be investing more than £10 billion a year in England’s 21,000 school buildings, together with university and college premises, compared with just £1.5 billion in 1997.

By then, he said, state school pupils could look forward to facilities as good as those enjoyed by Eton, Winchester and other independent schools; a cumulative £36 billion would be spent over four years lifting spending on buildings and equipment to private sector levels.

Instead of tax cuts, he goaded David Cameron, he was putting money where it mattered, into Britain’s future. As a down payment, tens of thousands would be paid direct to each school — £50,000 for primaries and £200,000 at secondary level.

Brown’s flurry of announcements was enough to get Labour backbenchers cheering him to the rafters, which was the idea; he now has no serious rival as prime minister. But for everybody else there was a powerful sense of déjà vu. Hadn’t he said all this before? The Institute for Fiscal Studies, Britain’s tax and spending think tank, soon confirmed that he had. In a detailed dismantling of Brown’s figures, the IFS pointed out that for all the chancellor’s talk, there was very little new money. The Tories tracked some of the announcements back to 2002.

The only new money, said Luke Sibieta of the IFS, was the direct payment to schools, worth £20 per pupil. Brown’s goal, of lifting all spending per pupil to independent sector levels, was still a long way away. Before he stood up, the gap was £2,350 a year. After he sat down it was £2,330.

That was not the only bit of his statement that quickly unravelled. People who had spent thousands of pounds changing their pensions so that they could pass money on to their children found out in the small print of Brown’s report that he was introducing a highly penal 82% tax rate on such arrangements.

A £1 billion “green” tax on air travel, by doubling air passenger duty, was attacked by environmentalists and airlines. They said it will do little to help the environment, while penalising travellers.

Explore Student

• News

• Student Life

• How To Get A Job

• Gap Year

Times recommends

• University black hole as applicants surge
• Students to be offered 'no-fee degrees'
• Women are outperforming men at university