Will Darling's frankness lose him his job?

Austin Barry

This is what shrinks call the "burst into reality" when the self-deluded can no longer refute reality. It could though be an astute leadership move: Darling both "gets it" and admits it, making the rest of the Cabinet appear a bunch of lying dissemblers. It will be most interesting to see how Team Brown reacts to the melancholic panda's off-message outburst.

mark c

isnt there a nulab method at work here ... they had a habit under Blair of creating some bad news headlines a few days ahead of a policy announcement that solves the problem thereby casting them in a better light than otherwise would have been the case. Whats going to announced shortly but a new econimic policy drive. Unconnected surely. Strikes me that Darlings headlines simply pave the way for a new economic drive to ease all our pains, now that we've all been softened up with some scare stories.

Darling is far too clever for a head above the parapet move, this will be politically calculated and coordinated plan to show off their new economic clothes. The clunking fists quiet approval will have been obtained and its got new strategy written all over it. My bet is it all for show and lacks for sensible content though.

TrevorH

marc c and indeed austin are giving far too much credence to any kind of 'plotting' ability by labour.

No one in labour has a clue - they never did.

Darling is getting his retribution his excuses in first. He knows he's toast

mckenzie

Mark C has said it all really. How the hell can the chancellor of the exchequer make the statement that he 'never saw it coming' when it was being forecast by all the economic commentators elswhere?

Teledu

Darling should have gone on to add "...and the policies that this government have pursued since 1997 are largely responsible for our problems. Therefore, I resign. As should the rest of the cabinet. We should all hang our heads in shame."
Now - that would be honesty. That would be news.

Peter Wilson

Darling has just painted an economic picture of being worse than the 90s, 70's and since WW2 and first we hear of it, is not as a statement to Parliament, but almost as a throwaway comment in a Newspaper.

Disgraceful!

David C

Considering that Darling was drafted in to be the PMs 'Vicar in the Treasury', he might have felt a mite aggrieved when he discovered he was to take the fall for Brown's mistakes (finding out he was barred from pubs the length and breadth of the UK would come as a nasty surprise).
And, to borrow his own turn of phrase, as he was pissed upon, so he pisses.

All this would be highly humourous if the rest of us weren't holding the 'smelly' end of the stick.

Ian C

Darling is not sackable - he knows where all of Brown's bodies are buried.

This was his Norman Lamont moment - "in government but not in power" said Lamont about Major. This is a calculated attempt at saving his own reputation as he has woken up to what Brown was up to for 10 years and realised how poisoned was/is the chalice he was offered and that he has no control over what happens from here viz a viz the economy. some realisation for a man who believed he was getting a top job.

Darling wil be the man to finally kill off Brown, if noone else dares, because it's either him or Brown who comes out worst from the coming phase of this Autumn's politics in Britain.

John Miller

This is the outburst of the man lying on his back under the guillotine watching his boss fiddling with the rope.

He's got his pre-emptive strike in first...

ChrisD

Everything I have read about the government over the last few weeks points to one obvious conclusion.

Brown is running his own "save Gordon" operation out of No10 while his authority over his cabinet has collapsed.
In fact, we no longer appear to have a functioning cabinet, let alone a government.
There is a complete lack team work with the accompanying joint planning and communication that brings with it.

Brown should have been sitting down with his cabinet almost weekly over the summer, and THEY should have been planning a joint government rescue plan instead of a Brown relaunch.
In fact his colleagues should have insisted on it as a condition of their continued support for the PM.
There should have also been one overall strategist managing the whole operation independent of the Brown cabal, whose is loyalty is to the Labour party not Brown.

This cabinet relaunch should also seen Brown sitting down and working at least once a week with individual cabinet Ministers so that everyone was on the top of every detail of their brief and all singing from the same page.

Instead, Brown will attempt a carefully planned rescue operation of his premiership having allowed his whole cabinet operation to disintegrate. That alone, without Darlings interview today is why it will fail.

You are only as strong as the people you surround yourself with, undermine and weaken them and it reflects even more poorly on your skills as a PM.
Blair and Brown ran a dual premiership, we don't seem to have anyone running the government now.
No one has the courage to even challenge Brown in private to do what needs to be done to save this government. But, we are falling over individual cabinet members concentrating fully on rescue operations in an attempt to save or shore up their own political careers.
Not good politics.

Trumpeter Lanfried

Brown no longer has the power to sack Darling or David Milliband. His authority has crumbled. Members of the cabinet are like matadors turning their backs on the bull. They only do that when they know he is beaten.

Tiberius

Now that Darling has crossed the Rubicon in his use of crude language, perhaps we can look forward to an apt description of his boss as something other than Brown.

Alf Tupper

Whether or not it loses him his job, it is a welcome change to hear some recognition of reality coming from an MP, rather than the trademark Westminster blarney we have come to expect and ignore.

I just hope we can take his message on board and realise we are in for a very rough and lengthy ride.

Tanuki

However truly perceptive and close-to-reality Darling's comments are, I just can't take seriously anyone who looks like a badger with a case of ringworm.

Dye your hair, bleach your eyebrows - or preferably *resign*.

Silent Hunter

GENERAL ELECTION...........NOW !!!

Bernard from Horsham

Brown is so weak, I doubt he could sack him, if he did a challenge would be more likely. If Brown puts Balls in,it would be Armageddon. A challenge seems more than likely now, before of after conference?? who knows. How many standing slow hand claps will Gordon get?

Athesius the Facilitator

Why do these "so called" clever people always get it so wrong. If Alaister Darling had told the truth about the economy one calender year ago when "we" humble bloggers had already started mumbling our discontent I think the man would still have his credibility intact. But he has "flannelled" for Gordon and "flannelled" for the Labour party and not for one nano-second did he think about the country. We deserve an election.

London Calling

The British people admire two qualities most of all, and that is Honesty and Honour. To be honest about past mistakes is one giant step for Alistair and I hope the rest of the Labour follow his example, followed by doing what is honourable by putting the people first and not last.

Politics as we knew it is no more, it can’t, because it doesn’t work, our world changed and we have to change with it.

As mentioned, who is going to put the beef on the table?

The answer to that is simple, the farmer who looks after his herd instead of just focusing on how much milk they provide.

Will Alistair be sacked?

I doubt it....since when was it a crime to be honest, if anything he would have gained more respect from the public at least and if Labour get it also, we may find that light at the end of the tunnel after all, and regardless what party one may support, we still have a country to run and a people to serve and the clock's still ticking, so lets not get stuck in the moment.

mitch

I think after reading the article that because darling didn't really blame gordon he has given him the excuse he needs to abandon his golden rules and borrow and spend at ridiculous levels.This is just spin and lies.of all the people to do this would you think darling eh?

Gordon Brown

Recession? What recession?

Anglica

Well, since we think we have time for this meander through the maze: I suppose it is an outstanding lesson about the materialization of Marxist "intellect" - how it sets itself to work. Though I say it's only what we used to dismiss as "LOW CUNNING."

Maybe that dismissiveness helped it to snare us up - even as it donned euro superciliousness in our very own...etc? And maybe soon {I hope, I pray} we'll have worried at the bone for so long that WE WILL NEVER FORGET its architecture!

Of course...the circuit(r)y has been in force ever since that snake wound its way into Eden. Since everyone has time to spare---- another great place to trace through interlace patterns is the Carpet Pages of Gospel manuscripts: Lindisfarne, for example (late 7th/early 8th century). Those force me to escape from the futility of tracery... to consideration of "right" courses for action.

In response to real and present danger, my offering is support for those who call for: REFERENDUM and GENERAL ELECTION NOW.

John de Finchley

@ChrisD:

"Brown should have been sitting down with his cabinet almost weekly over the summer, and THEY should have been planning a joint government rescue plan instead of a Brown relaunch."

Why on earth would Broon involve the Cabinet in such a way? He despises them all as a bunch of nonentities who hadn't the balls to stand against him. He appointed them exactly because they are useless, supine mediocrities.

Captain Coma

You can't have your chancellor, in the very week that our beloved PM is about to relaunch himself with an economic recovery plan, come on telly saying that we're all doomed and it's back to the 1930s.

Darling has just challenged Brown to sack him. As far as I can see, Brown has no other option, and he has to do it immediately or he'll look like a complete twunt when he rolls out his genius masterplan to what is effectively a chorus of raspberries from the Treasury.

Now, if Brown sacks Darling, who else might (as previously arranged) walk out in support of him? Eeyore Straw and Monkey Boy Milliband to name but two.

Brown couldn't survive that.

Definitely assassination time, and astutely done. Check mate, Gordon, old pal. Pay the nurse on your way out.

Hysteria

oh dear - the wheels have completely come off now

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2008/08/31/cndarling131.xml

Fergus Pickering

In spite of the general belief among Speccie readers re beards, most of you will surely agree that Darling looked better when he had one, less hag-ridden somehow. Though that, of course, was long before he became Chancellor. Theyebrows are Denis healet's but perhaps that other hag-ridden Chancelor isno longer using them.

john williams

I notice two related things happening this weekend. We have the Chancellor saying that we are in the shit - not his fault and no suggestion of a plan to get us out of the mess. Then we have one G Brown saying that he's just noticed that we buy a lot of oil from Russia and that this could be a problem. Not his fault and no plan to get us out of another disaster area. What is the job of these people if a) they don't notice the blindingly obvious an b) they have no idea of what to do about the mess they have made? There must be some way to get rid of this disfunctional lot while there's still something left of what used to be Great Britain....

Hysteria

John W - pitchforks...?

Frank Pulley

Hysteria

'pitchforks'?? Have you got hay in your ears? I would suggest something a little more Third Millennium made (ironically) by Kalashnikov; but I'm afraid we'll have to wait until that which is mightier than the sword can put an appropriate cross in the appropriate square (if Herr Shitler Mugabe Braun doesn't eventually abandon general elections as a last move to avoid getting shit- canned).