It’s debatable whether politicians of the Left or the Right are better at handling the public finances. But we do seem to learn more about economics under a Labour government. Alistair Darling’s memoir chronicles his turbulent years at the Treasury as he watched the world slithering into a financial volcano. Though the material is extremely dramatic, Darling’s sober, measured prose doesn’t quite suit the story’s explosive theatricality.
He was haunted by the Northern Rock crisis of 2007 and the global impact of TV images showing panicking investors queuing up to withdraw all their cash. That, he determined, must never happen again. More than once, as the crisis swept the world, he had to stage manage a calm exit from a summit in order to dash home and sort out a new phase in the calamity. With hindsight we should be thankful that this competent, humane and unflappable character was in the cockpit as the economy hit the roughest weather since the Great Depression. He brought the plane down in open water rather than into a mountainside. And he avoided a second run on a bank.
Like any good politician he merrily clobbers his current opponents. When quantitative easing was first mooted, he reminds us, Vince Cable damned it as ‘the road to Harare’. And George Osborne declared that ‘printing money is the last resort of desperate governments’ (which isn’t quite same as ruling it out, of course). Both changed their minds in office.
With his own colleagues, Darling is more cautious. He refuses to knife any Labour member (notably Ed Balls) whose career is still active. Of Gordon Brown and his uncontrollable rages he records this soon-to-be-legendary observation from Tony Blair. ‘It’s like facing the dentist’s drill without anaesthetic. It goes on and on.’ And though Darling discusses Brown’s gang of bullies in anonymous generalities, he correctly identifies the source of the problem: their political focus was perverted. They swung into action straight after Labour’s first landslide and their sole aim was to eject the sitting prime minister. ‘There wasn’t a plot,’ Darling says, ‘it was an open campaign.’
And ultimately Brown was ‘ill-served’ by his crew of whisperers and schemers, because ‘speaking the truth to power didn’t come into it.’ Brown would only hear ‘what he wanted, or could bear, to hear’. And once Brown was installed as prime minister, ‘the cabal sought fresh enemies’.
This soft, chilling phrase is typical of Darling’s laconic manner. Brown had long intended to ditch his stand-in chancellor in favour of Ed Balls and Darling got ready to receive his marching orders with a ceremonial ‘Last Supper’ at Number 11. But the plan was scuppered by James Purnell’s shock resignation from the Cabinet in June 2009. Brown could no longer afford to lose his most senior colleague. He got his switchboard to summon Darling to a 7 o’clock meeting the next day. ‘I said I would come as soon as I had washed and shaved,’ comments Darling (and this ironic aside is the closest he gets to gloating).
The prime minister gave his chancellor the news with a characteristic lack of grace. ‘OK, you can stay,’ he muttered. At this moment Darling held Brown’s destiny in his hand. Had he walked, Brown may not have survived the ensuing turmoil. But Darling’s ‘residual loyalty’, and his innate caution, prevented him from triggering a leadership crisis.
Unusually for a senior politician, Darling has hardly any ego. The findings of opinion polls mean little to a man who buys his own groceries and can rely on the ‘Tesco test’. ‘I make a point of watching how people react when I go shopping. If they look away, you are in trouble.’
His innate decency prevents him from trashing figures like Mervyn King, the Bank of England governor, who clearly infuriated him by making political statements. And he even refuses to denounce Sir Fred Goodwin, the RBS boss, who was responsible for the biggest business failure in history. His bank’s liabilities in 2007 totalled £1.9 trillion, (£400 billion more than the entire turnover of the British economy). And when RBS was saved, the British taxpayer got saddled with thousands of acres of worthless American trailer parks. Yet Darling’s only criticism is to question Sir Fred’s attempt to increase his pension entitlement of £400,000. ‘Most people could struggle by on that.’
The focus of this book is decidedly narrow and its chief appeal will be to policy wonks and credit-crunch watchers. But a longer, fuller, more wide-ranging memoir is bound to follow. Darling is one of the few ministers who served at Cabinet level throughout Labour’s 13 years in power. He has much more to tell us. Next time, one hopes, he will wield the blade a little more enthusiastically.
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