So he's finally called the election, for May 6. History is likely to be very unkind to Gordon Brown. It will remember his temper, his appalling rudeness, his perpetual temptation to put party above country, his paralysing dithering, his Machiavellian scheming against Tony Blair and others.

I don't buy the Brownian miracle. When his wife says that he "loves his country" in an attempt to boost his reputation, I want to retch. But in the interests of fairness, I wanted to lay down, from the perspective of someone to the right of the political centre, what good things he has achieved in his 13 years as Chancellor then as PM. For his own reputation's sake, it would be best if he does not win another term. It's impossible to see how Labour, given how it got here, can take the steps necessary to fix our broken country. And, indeed, Brown blew his best opportunity to make a good name for himself when he apparently ruled himself out of the running for President of the World Bank.

So, when we overlook the bad, what's left?

There's a single item for which I give Brown credit. He was the architect of Labour's golden rules - to borrow only to invest over an economic cycle and to keep borrowing below 40% of GDP. The UK's golden rules were vital in 1997 in convincing a sceptical public that Labour could be trusted with the economy. But they were also very good for the country. The rules were a fantastic discipline on politicians of all colours. In fact, had he stuck to his rules instead of perpetually cheating, we would have been much better prepared for the recession. As it was, he couldn't resist manipulating the dates of the economic cycle and making wildly optimistic projections of future growth rates. And then he let the 40% limit slide.

I hope that a future government, of whatever party, will see fit to reintroduce the golden rules and to stick to them, come what may. If only Brown had followed the golden rules as if his very life depended on it, we would have been in much better economic shape today.

Yes, I didn't give Brown credit for giving the Bank of England freedom to set interest rates, one of the first actions of the 1997 Labour government and the policy which is typically painted as their finest achievement. Unfortunately, I can't see past the subsequent meddling in interest rate definition and the trouble low-interest finance has gotten us into.

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Filed under: Financial management, Politics with tags bank of england, deficit, golden rules, gordon brown, labour, world bank