Alistair Darling, the taxpayers' unlikely hero
Fraser Nelson 11:23am
Might Alistair Darling prove to be a hero of the Labour endgame? When he was first appointed, I argued that he'd be a puppet - "no more a Chancellor than Captain Scarlet was an actor". I have since heard plenty of stories to the contrary: that he is doing a pretty good job saving taxpayers from the baser intentions of Brown, Balls, Cooper etc.
He has been busy chasing Shriti Vadera away from his territory - she's prowling the City, claiming to speak with Brown's authority. He is pushing for transparency and honesty in the government, insisting that his Pre-Budget Report went to 2013/14 so he could show how he would get the deficit back to zero (Brown wanted to drop the tax-raising bad years). His Budget, for example, was the first since 1996 not to have some hidden trick. And, most importantly, he has been resisting Brown's current attempts to have a massive tax cut in the Budget funded by the Bank of England ahead of the June local elections. There will be a "stimulus", I'm told, but the Treasury and No.10 disagree over its size. Since being appointed, Darling has twice offered to resign: not in a threatening way, but just to make Brown know that he doesn't live in fear of the backbenches. And he need not spell out what damage he could cause if he did a Geoffrey Howe. So Darling strikes a different (if not deliberately inharmonious) note from No.10.
But why this difference? Here's my theory: that Darling is an honest man who believes that as Chancellor he has a duty to level with the public about the debt carried in their name, especially during such times. Unlike Brown, he does not see the Budget as a political weapon, a 220-page piece of hate mail to post to Notting Hill. He sees himself as guardian of the nation's finances. He is not slavishly loyal to Brown. But perhaps most of all, HM Treasury as an institution is asserting itself again. Darling is slowly realising from Treasury civil servants what Brown and Balls made them do in the last decade. The Treasury has traditionally been bastion of fiscal rectitude, but Brown made it into the Arthur Daley department for debt concealment. This greatly offended many in the Treasury, who are now speaking directly to Darling and saying: there is no more money. Also the Treasury staff will, unlike Brown, be here the day after the election to clean it up. They have every incentive to stop Brown trashing the economy.
Remember, HMT has a wonderfully subversive form. Three decades ago it was patriots within the Treasury civil service who massively overstated public spending, and told Healey that government debt was 60% of GDP in 1976. The real figure was 42% - but by the time Healey realised that the IMF had been called in and a cuts agenda started. "I cannot help suspecting that Treasury officials deliberately overstated public spending in order to put pressure on governments which were reluctant to cut it," moaned Healey in his memoirs. I like to think of the band of Treasury officials who pulled this off having a quiet celebratory drink together in the Red Lion; their resourcefulness and sharp-thinking saved Britain from a desperate, spendthrift government.
The Treasury have no chance of repeating this trick, seeing as Brown knows every trick in the book and is a master of dressing up 50p as £1. But this statistical chicanery is harder to implement from No.10, and the Treasury have a good chance of softening the blow he intends to inflict on the taxpayer in the next Budget. With Darling resisting pressure for tax cuts, and promoting transparency, the taxpayer may well have found an unlikely hero in 11 Downing Street. And my, do we need one.
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Dirty Euro
March 15th, 2009 11:40am Report this commentThis is surely a massive scandal that you quote.
"Three decades ago it was patriots within the Treasury civil service who massively overstated public spending, and told Healey that government debt was 60% of GDP in 1976. The real figure was 42% - but by the time Healey realised that the IMF had been called in and a cuts agenda started. "I cannot help suspecting that Treasury officials deliberately overstated public spending in order to put pressure on governments which were reluctant to cut it,"
The civil servants are a disgrace then, having a right wing extremist bias in the government is immoral and corrupt. I bet they were the creeps who forced the PM to get rid of the 10 p tax rate. I hate civil servants. Fire the creeps.
mac
March 15th, 2009 12:12pm Report this comment"having a right wing extremist bias in the government is immoral and corrupt".
Absolutely. What's needed is Gramscian ideals to give us the honesty, integrity and incorruptibility which is so evident in our current stellar government.
On another of your day passes from planet Zog, DES?
tony
March 15th, 2009 12:20pm Report this commentThe chancellor has been very good and open. Bear in mind have you ever worked for a boss who created a mess and then had to clear it up! He is certainly a hero for those individual savers who could have lost a lot of money eg Icelandic banks and Northern Rock. He also has no blame for the Pension Fund taxation unless there is something from his time at the Treasury previously.
oldtimer
March 15th, 2009 12:43pm Report this commentI hope that you are right about Darling and the Treasury.
Ever since learning that, at Edinburgh, Brown edited the book on how to fiddle the system and get freebies out of it, it has been clear what Brown is all about. He started small and now operates on the grandest of scales. Getting the BoE to print money to fund tax cuts would be but the latest example. Worse, it is entirely believable that he would contemplate such a device. When will Labour MPs have the guts to do something about him?
David Boothroyd
March 15th, 2009 12:51pm Report this commentWhy is the idea of Alastair Darling as the friend of the taxpayer in any way unlikely?
John Adlington
March 15th, 2009 1:06pm Report this commentI see your boycott of right wing blogs is going well Dirty Euro
Don
March 15th, 2009 1:14pm Report this commentDES you're right. THIS is the massive scandal. Something that happened 30 years ago and protected the country from the worst ravages of an overweening government. Tell me do you not think that the current state of the countries finances is a scandal?
Tiberius
March 15th, 2009 1:37pm Report this commentLove the sentence about hatemail, Fraser!
Perhaps some of us should apologize to Darling for mis-casting him in the piece. If he leaves just one bridge over the Rhein intact for the Tories, we should give him credit where it's due.
Bill Paisley
March 15th, 2009 1:43pm Report this commentHa! Finally the mask falls. Nice to see that after all the posturing about freedom and democracy, that Fraser supports unelected civil servants deliberately undermining the elected Government's policy through fraud.
RW
March 15th, 2009 1:43pm Report this commentWell I dunno, Fraser. One minute you're seeing giant government conspiracies where there were just a few muddled old dears in a call centre. Now you're alleging that Dead Sheep Darling has metamorphosed into Captain Marvel, the superhero torn between the bigotry of his alien homeland, his entrapment in the Negative Zone, and his realization of the call of duty over the knowledge of his inevitable fate.
I think you need to go and have a nice lie down.
Fergus Pickering
March 15th, 2009 1:47pm Report this commentDirty Euro, who forced the PM to get rid of the 10p tax rate? Who has ever forced Brown to do anything except Blair? He forced the bastard to support the Iraq policy through gritted teeth. Because Blair was in a position to sack Brown. Were the civil servants in such a position? Don't be silly. But then you're a leftie so of course...
TGF UKIP
March 15th, 2009 1:48pm Report this commentFraser, I think you may encounter a degree of cynicism from Coffee Housers over this portrait of Scottish rectitude at the head of a Treasury staffed by principled and a-political public servants.
For my part, while my mind has been flicking back to Peter Thorneycroft, I don't believe any of this scum have a principled resignation anywhere in their DNA but I must admit it would be nice to be proved wrong. In any case, though, I can't somehow see La Balls, Timms and Pearson as being in quite the same league as Enoch Powell and Nigel Birch.
Denis Cooper
March 15th, 2009 2:59pm Report this commentIs this the same Alistair Darling who recently set up Darling Insurance to guarantee (part of) the "toxic assets" owned by RBS (and now Lloyds), forcing me to become an investor with unlimited liability, which could cost me thousands of pounds in increased taxes if it turns out that he's over-estimated the real value of those assets?
And the same man who's more recently told the governor of the Bank of England to create money out of thin air and buy up gilts, what's more paying over the odds for them, simply to make it easier for his chaps in the Treasury to borrow more money by issuing new gilts, so that he can spend more?
Excuse me, while I get my dictionary and check the meaning of the word "hero".
Denis Cooper
March 15th, 2009 3:04pm Report this commentAre you sure that you're confusing him with Grace Darling, who really was a hero, or heroine as would have been said in those days?
http://www.rnli.org.uk/who_we_are/the_heritage_trust/grace-darling-museum
TrevorsDen
March 15th, 2009 3:32pm Report this commentI'd like to be proved wrong as well but I believe Darling is Browns doormat.
Its an interesting scenario though. With Labour looking doomed Darling may have to look more to his place in history rather than playing the dog on the HMV logo.
However his PBR was hopelessly over optimistic which to me seemed to have Browns fingerprints all over it.
Quite frankly its time for Treasury mandarins to stand up and be counted and not messed around by Nr 10.
Healey? I don't think we can count on his reliability - any more than we can rely on the way Brown has manipulated debt and GDP figures..
Anan
March 15th, 2009 3:38pm Report this comment"The Treasury have no chance of repeating this trick" Yes, because it has been filled by Labour sucking incompetent class-war twits by Bowser Brown from day 1.
David Boycott
March 15th, 2009 4:22pm Report this comment"I hate civil servants. Fire the creeps."
Pity this appalling government has added another half million parasites to the state payroll then isn't it?
jim
March 15th, 2009 4:43pm Report this commentI suppose it's tempting to try and see some hope through the gloom, but really there is none. If Darling was a hero, he wouldn't be a Labour MP, as these things are incompatible.
This is just a case of the rats leaving the sinking ship, even Mervyn King is getting stroppy. They all know that thanks to QE, hyper-inflation, and all its horrors, are bearing down on us.
Jupiter
March 15th, 2009 6:59pm Report this commentDarling has a big chance to go down in history by resigning and sticking the knife into the great numpty Brown. It's his only hope of saving his reputation, but will he have the guts to do it?
Glyn H
March 15th, 2009 8:17pm Report this commentAn interesting post, sir, which has a ring of truth. However as a very ordinary chap in the street who has never so much as crossed the threshold of a Whitehall department and lives 200 miles from London how is it that I have known and understood that Brown has debauched the Treasury these many years and used it as a tool for his maniacal social meddling and yet other members of his party and Government did not comprehend this?
chris
March 15th, 2009 10:08pm Report this commentIf Darling is ok, could somebody remember when we last has a Scot in the government who was any good?
Dirty Euro
March 15th, 2009 11:53pm Report this commentMac I am from earth, yes the big blue planet next your one. Our brains are not all fried to bits on this one, so that gives me an unfair advantage.
What planet do you think it is fair that there is a right wing bias in government that would put humiliation for our nation as preferable to left wingers getting their own way.
No doubt some devious civil servants being paid a fortune to run a good government, are instead working on devious ways to get right wing governments elected. Healey should be interviwwed on this corruption issue and should name the guilty civil servants.
JohnAnt
March 16th, 2009 1:44am Report this commentI suppose the civil servants worked out that they could either exaggerate the government debt and have the IMF called in before the country was reduced to permanent beggary; or give the real figure in which case Healey would have carried on spending and we'd have reached the 60% debt figure a year later, and taken much longer to recover. It was not a political move, but a humane one, like refusing to blow up a bridge or shoot the prisoners.
Governments think they have the right to do 'what they want' while in power, but morally and legally, they don't.
bonnieprince
March 16th, 2009 9:45am Report this commentChris - Robin Cook? Didn't he resign on principle?
Malcolm Rifkind (Tory)- as defence..
Frank P
March 16th, 2009 12:47pm Report this commentJupiter, you ask "Darling has a big chance to go down in history by resigning and sticking the knife into the great numpty Brown. It's his only hope of saving his reputation, but will he have the guts to do it?"
Hey Jummy! The Scotia Nostra has 'omerta' too, y'know. And the same rules for those who transgress. And you'd watch it! Or they'll have a jockwa declared against you, too!
James M
March 17th, 2009 8:44pm Report this comment"The Treasury has traditionally been bastion of fiscal rectitude, but Brown made it into the Arthur Daley department for debt concealment."
The Treasury is simply returning to form, which is as well. There is an interesting and telling anecdote about King James returning to England from holiday in Scotland. As he travelled south from Scotland, he regally ordered money from the Treasury. "Thirty miles beyond Carlisle the Treasury waggon hove in sight, guarded by a posse of troops. The courtiers surrounded the waggon, the covers were thrown back, and the royal eyes peered suspiciously into the cavernous interior; on the floor reposed a tiny canvas bag, containing £400. James sent off a furious protest; from the Treasury came the enigmatic answer: `If your wants are so great now, what will they be after your return?'"
[The Stuarts, J P Kenyon]
Indeed.
seb
March 24th, 2009 6:25pm Report this commentOrdinary citizens who end up insolvent are aware that it is only possible to spend one's way into bankruptcy, not out of it. Kirkcaldy's Leading Autist, of course, believes this rule does not apply to him as he has a money printing press. If Captain Badger has not yet twigged to the fact that he is an accessory to KLA's economic crimes, it unlikely that he ever will. I see no evidence that Badger is the taxpayer's hero. Henchman? Yes.
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