Battling the ‘big clunking fist’: Gordon Brown’s Treasury, the first Comprehensive Spending Review and the Strategic Defence Review of 1997–98

The first Comprehensive Spending Review in 1997–98, led by Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown, was an important innovation of the first Blair government that allowed greater budget certainty for departments. The Comprehensive Spending Review occurred in parallel to a separate Strategic Defence Review within the Ministry of Defence, that reset British defence policy in a post-Cold War world where there were few, if any, existential threats to the United Kingdom. This article assesses the power relationships between the Treasury and government departments in general, the interactions between the two reviews, not least the Treasury’s wish to subordinate the Strategic Defence Review to the Comprehensive Spending Review, and the impact this had over defence policy decisions. The article argues that the Comprehensive Spending Review process increased Treasury powers not only over how much money was spent within departments but also how it was spent, whilst the Prime Minister and his office were largely kept at arms-length. Although the Ministry of Defence did have greater autonomy at the start of the process than other departments, in the end it had to subordinate itself to the Treasury in order to complete both the Comprehensive Spending Review and the Strategic Defence Review.