Brown beats Blair in popularity polls

Gordon Brown has outstripped Tony Blair in the popularity stakes for the first time in a post-Budget coup which looks likely to put a new edge on relations between the two.

A new poll by MORI finds 57 per cent of the voters satisfied with Mr Brown's performance as Chancellor, with 28 per cent dissatisfied.

The net 29 per cent plus rating takes him soaring ahead of the Prime Minister, whose approval rating sank last month to minus eight. And it looks certain to raise the spirits of Mr Brown's backers, hoping their man will inherit the premiership - provided his Budget gamble pays off - after the next election.

A beauty contest between the Chancellor and the Prime Minister threatens to raise tensions in both camps. Former Cabinet minister Mo Mowlam, in her memoirs out this week, dates her downfall from the moment she outshone Mr Blair at a Labour Party conference.

The poll, in the Financial Times, found 65 per cent believing the Budget was good for the country as a whole, with just 20 per cent seeing-it as bad. The strong popular approval contrasts sharply with the broadly hostile reception from businesses, complaining that they have been massively penalised by the rise in employers' National Insurance contributions.

Much of the shine could be taken off the Budget package if and when ministers become involved in a serious tussle with the public sector unions, above all in the National Health Service, already pushing for big increases in pay.

Health Secretary Alan Milburn is to speak to a nurses' conference tomorrow, with Mr Brown addressing a gathering of the public services' union Unison the day after, with both warning that the bulk of the extra billions allocated to the NHS must go to boost patients, not pay packets.

There is severe public scepticism over one claim from Mr Blair and Mr Brown, that the Budget, with its £8.3 billion a year rise in taxes, is merely a continuation of Labour strategy since it was elected in 1997.

Almost 60 per cent of those polled said it did mark a radical change of tack, with only 27 per cent believing it was in line with earlier pledges not to raise taxes. Even among Labour supporters, last week's package was seen as a change of course.

There is also continuing concern among Labour ministers, from Mr Blair down, that the Budget could backfire badly if, by the time of the next election three or four years from now, the extra tax burden has not been matched by visible improvements in hospitals and doctors' surgeries.

There is one sting in the tail for the Chancellor in today's poll, and a possible ray of hope for the Tories.

The balance of approval for last week's Budget is higher than for any since 1997 and it shows Mr Brown as more popular than any chancellor since Labour's holder of the office at the time, Denis Healey. Two years later the Labour government had fallen and Margaret Thatcher had come to power.