I knew and valued Joel Barnett as a Labour colleague and friend, in government and in Parliament, for over forty years. Most impressive was seeing him regularly in Downing Street as the brave and meticulously clear Chief Secretary to the Treasury during the constant economic crises from 1974-79. Diminutive in physical stature, he was formidable in arguing for financial rationality when opposing the phalanx of more senior ministers demanding ever more public expenditure on some currently fashionable but extravagant nonsense.
