By Jack Doyle, PA Political Staff

In his early years at the Treasury, Gordon Brown could do little wrong.

The economy was Labour's biggest success story, solidifying the reputation of its Iron Chancellor. But in recent months, some of Mr Brown's earliest decisions have come back to haunt him, accompanied by a barrage of criticism over his style of management.

The fate of the economy and the public finances are tightly linked to Mr Brown's political future - so how does his record stand today?

Few chancellors, and even fewer Labour chancellors, can compare their success in managing the economy to Mr Brown's. However much the Tories point to structural reforms in the 1980s and Ken Clarke's stewardship after the pound fell out of the Exchange Rate Mechanism, Mr Brown can take a great deal of credit for what happened on his watch.

The economic report card reads As and Bs for most of the major targets. Growth, inflation and employment have been, by both historical and international standards, in very good shape.

Bank of England independence, launched on an unsuspecting public immediately after the 1997 election, has been - until recently - an unqualified success.

With control of monetary policy delegated to a committee at the Bank, the Chancellor was able to dedicate more time to broadening his power base, and he stretched the Treasury's tentacles into spending departments and other policy issues much more than his predecessors ever dared. The euro became part of his domain. While Tony Blair was strongly in favour of the single currency, Mr Brown took control, reducing the decision to a question of economics: his five tests.

Since he would rule on the outcome of the tests himself, Mr Brown could decide their conclusions, and rule on a policy regarded by some as more of a political question than an economic one.

Whatever his reasons, the intervention stands to his credit on strictly economic criteria: Britain outperforms the euro area, which struggles to maintain its pact on economic stability.

The Chancellor was also able to control his colleagues at big departments of state, by both dictating how much they would get - the Treasury's traditional role - and, more unusually, the ways in which it would be spent.

Reviews of big policy areas conducted by trusted Treasury invitees - such as Derek Wanless on NHS funding - and the use of public service agreements to dictate performance targets, were the tools of control.

The Prime Minister allowed his Chancellor to operate with unusual latitude, an arrangement which it is claimed emerged from the pair's Granita pact over the Labour leadership election.

Whatever the reason, Mr Blair was excluded from key decisions. Derek Scott, a former No 10 economic advisor, claimed the Chancellor wouldn't reveal to his next door neighbour the contents of the Budget, leaving the Prime Minister pleading: "Give us a clue, Gordon".

When money was sloshing around the public finances, Mr Brown's intervention wasn't a problem. Everyone had enough, or more than enough, and there were gargantuan spending increases for Labour's priority issues, principally schools and the NHS.

But when the money started drying up, Mr Brown's methods came under much closer scrutiny. This was the extent of the charge made by Lord Turnbull, a former head of the civil service, when he described Mr Brown as "Macavity", exercising "Stalinist" degrees of control but avoiding criticism for decisions he had made.

The Tories make a separate but linked charge, that much of the money raised to fund public services was done through stealth.

Tax bands were adjusted with inflation and not earnings, dragging more people into paying more but, unlike the rises in National Insurance to pay for the NHS, without any clear public announcements.

Revelations that Mr Brown ignored clear warnings from civil servants over the abolition of tax credits for pensions also hurt his reputation, as does overpayment of billions of pounds in tax credits for those on low incomes.

Mr Brown's Midas touch also escaped him when it came to selling off gold, which he did while the market was bottoming out.

More recently, there have been signs the economy might become a worry for Mr Brown. Only last month, the Governor of the Bank of England wrote a letter to the Chancellor to explain why inflation had gone over target.

Interest rates are on the rise, and yet the housing market continues to spiral upwards alongside record levels of personal debt.

Mr Brown may not worry excessively: overall the economy remains buoyant. But he would be excused a nervous chew on his fingernails.