Brown cannot escape his past so easily

As Prime Minister, he loves to emphasise his keenness on tackling the nation's long-term problems - and if it's not problems, it's the long-term challenges and long-term issues. Thus last week Brown told the National Council of Voluntary Organisations that Britain needed a new type of consensual, centre-ground politics so "we can meet the challenges of change for the long-term national interests of this country".

Brown doesn't add "trust me" but it's implicit in his plea. But before I can place my faith in him, I need to square the Gordon I'm hearing now with the one who was Chancellor for 10 years.

He may want us to think of him as a new Prime Minister. But that doesn't mean we should forget he was Chancellor for a long time - for the long term, in fact.

For a decade he ran the Treasury as an alternative government. Cabinet colleagues spoke of their bafflement, frustration and not inconsiderable anger that within his department Brown set up teams to shadow their own. Everything they did, if it involved any expenditure, was subject to scrutiny. The Spending Review was a stick to beat them with, to keep them in check. And that meant ignoring a raft of long-term problems.

So while we've recently been treated to the sight of the PM confronting the lack of adequate flood defences, he refused to sanction the money for their building when he was in charge of the finances.

Similarly, on prison places. Officials consistently warned of a rapidly increasing prison population. Brown's response was to make provision for just 940 new places in 2005/06 versus 4,716 in 1997/98. Sometimes his colleagues reacted with fury, to little effect. But this summer it's a different Brown - the latest over-crowding crisis has seen him pledge 9,500 new places to be made available by 2012.

Part of the fault lies with his huge reliance on private finance initiative projects. His term as Chancellor was characterised by an explosion in PFI. He used it to ratchet up spending in health and education. But while PFI projects in those areas were "off-balance sheet", pressure from the National Audit Office meant that prisons had to be treated as "on-balance sheet". The result was a huge disparity: while off-balance sheet hospital developments have received £9 billion, or 21 per cent of all PFI spending since 1997, just £236 million - 0.6 per cent - has been used to build new prisons.

It was the same with roads. The NAO argued that road schemes, as they formed part of the national fabric, had to appear on the Government's books. As a consequence, Brown's Chancellorship was notable for its lack of major highways investment.

The lack of a decent transport infrastructure is one of Brown's most pressing problems today. Yet this is the same person who, as Chancellor, announced in 2004 that £20 billion would be allocated to constructing new transport links, but committed only £18 billion - thus lopping £2 billion from the transport budget.

Tram developments in Leeds and Liverpool were scrapped; the long-delayed upgrading of Thameslink was delayed yet further; and there is still no sign at all of Crossrail, the vital proposed Heathrow-to-Stratford link.

Do not be surprised if soon Brown sanctions Crossrail, major road improvements and numerous other projects he refused to back while at No 11, as part of his determination to solve the nation's problems now that he's at No 10. The short-termism that typified his rule as Chancellor has given way to concern for the country's long-term welfare. That might be acceptable but for the fact that he was Chancellor for 10 years, which is surely long-term enough.

And it's the same right across government. Brown loves to bang on about his intention to simplify taxation. But shadow chief secretary to the Treasury Philip Hammond is justified in saying Brown is "responsible for creating the most complicated tax regime in the world".

The 2007 edition of Tolley's Yellow Tax Handbook, the definitive guide to the tax system, has 40 per cent more pages than the 2001 version. This year's runs to 9,866 pages over four volumes compared with 5,952 pages in two volumes in 2001.

Prime Minister Brown wants to streamline a tax machine allowed to run out of control by that character rarely mentioned these days: Brown the Chancellor.

And at the same time, it's becoming steadily clear that where Brown did lavish money over the past 10 years, above all, on education and health, the effect has been limited.

Since Labour came to office, education spending has almost doubled to £50 billion a year. Year after year, Brown trumpeted huge new sums to be spent on schools. Yet an Office of National Statistics report last week found that productivity has fallen by 0.7 per cent a year since 1999.

A string of exam results over the past few months for both primary and secondary-school children has shown how very slow the pace of progress has been. Last month's Key Stage 1 results actually showed a drop in the number of children reaching the required standard in maths and science at age 11.

Meanwhile, in the NHS, the other place where Chancellor Brown shovelled in extra cash, the results are distinctly patchy. NHS spending was rising by about 10 per cent a year in cash terms for the first half of this decade. The Government has successfully reduced waiting times, and has made good progress in some key areas such as cancer and heart disease. Yet productivity across the NHS has barely risen, while the lion's share of the extra money went on salaries. We now have the highest-paid GPs in Europe - but not many people will tell you the family doctor service is any better, and we have a far worse out-of-hours service than before.

Prime Minister Brown is carrying off his new self with terrific élan. By inviting us to share in his crusade against long-term ills, he's almost made us forget how poorly he dealt with those problems over the past 10 years. It's a brilliant act - but he cannot hope to escape so lightly: for it is he who is the architect of the mess that our prisons, roads, tax system and much more are in today.