Editing Kenneth Clarke (section)

===Chancellor of the Exchequer===
[[File:Kenneth Clarke.gif|thumb|upright=0.9|Clarke as Chancellor of the Exchequer]]
At first, Clarke was seen as the dominant figure in Cabinet, and at the October 1993 Conservative Party Conference he defended Major from his critics by pronouncing "any enemy of John Major is an enemy of mine."

In the party leadership contest of 1995, when John Major beat [[John Redwood]], Clarke kept faith in Major and commented: "I don't think the Conservative Party could win an election in 1,000 years on this ultra right-wing programme".<ref>{{cite news | url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/pm-assails-malcontent-redwood-1588458.html | location=London | work=The Independent | first1=Donald | last1=Macintyre | first2=Colin | last2=Brown | date=27 June 1995 | title=PM assails 'malcontent' Redwood | access-date=2 September 2017 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170913044302/http://www.independent.co.uk/news/pm-assails-malcontent-redwood-1588458.html | archive-date=13 September 2017 | url-status=live }}</ref>

Clarke enjoyed an increasingly successful record as Chancellor, as the economy recovered from the recession of the early 1990s and a new monetary policy was put into effect after Black Wednesday. He reduced the basic rate of income tax from 25% to 23%, reduced UK Government spending as a percentage of GDP, and reduced the budget deficit from £50.8&nbsp;billion in 1993 to £15.5&nbsp;billion in 1997. Clarke's successor, the [[Labour Party (UK)|Labour]] [[Chancellor of the Exchequer|Chancellor]] [[Gordon Brown]], continued these policies, which eliminated the deficit by 1998 and allowed Brown to record a budget surplus for the following four years. Interest rates, inflation and unemployment all fell during Clarke's tenure at [[HM Treasury]]. Clarke's success was such that Brown felt he had to pledge to keep to Clarke's spending plans and these limits remained in place for the first two years of the Labour Government that was elected in 1997.<ref name="profile"/>