LEAKS were in the air yesterday, on every front page and every news bulletin.

Many of them foreshadowed Gordon Brown's announcement this afternoon which should prove to be the most important in the five-year life of this Government. One of them, though, overshadowed the rest as it was a memo written by Tony Blair showing him worried about being perceived as out of touch.

This leak was clearly cleverly contrived to destroy all the other leaks which were building up the excitement before Mr Brown's Comprehensive Spending Review today. Three years in the waiting - Labour promised to stick to Conservative spending plans for two years after the 1997 General Election to prove it would not increase income tax - and blown out of the water by an apparent piece of Prime Ministerial paranoia.

The best laid leaks of mice and ministers...

In the real world of the House of Commons debating chamber, Mr Brown will today outline how he plans to spend £43bn of taxpayers' money. Thanks to the sound economy he inherited, to his prudent management of it and to his increases in indirect (or "stealth") taxes, Mr Brown has the chance to define the meaning of New Labour. Is it anymore than a series of well-spun soundbites and well-placed leaks? Is there a strategy behind how these vast sums are going to raise standards across the board?

For example, one of yesterday's leaks suggested that Alan Milburn is to be given £1.3bn to make nursing care for the elderly free. This currently costs £337 per person per week and, although there will be means-tested "hotel fees" for patients of about £120 a week, it is to be welcomed. But is it anymore than a sop to pensioners who are angry at their derisory 75p rise in the weekly state pension? Or does it fit into a strategy to reduce the "bed-blocking" - 20 per cent of hospital beds are taken up by recuperating elderly people, which brought the NHS to its knees last winter at the height of the flu crisis?

Education, transport, law and order and defence are all expected to benefit greatly from Mr Brown's largesse. But the greatest lesson he can learn from yesterday's ill-fated media management is that today's announcement is best made in straightforward English untainted by an accountant's sleight of hand.

Spending £43bn on Britain's essential services which have been woefully neglected for 20 years should not need spinning and soundbites - unless it has not been properly thought through.