The whispering campaign against Alistair Darling just went public. The Sunday Times carries an article today that is packed with devastating quotes from government insiders, albeit anonymous ones. We are told by an MP close to Number 10 that Brown’s team are openly considering moving Darling out of Number 11 in a reshuffle while a Treasury Civil Servant bemoans that Ed Balls is not in charge and claims that there wouldn’t be any of these problems if he was. You don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to work out who might be hoping from this briefing against Darling.
Yet, as Iain Martin points out at Three Line Whip, this is a dangerous game. First, losing a Chancellor is no small matter for a Prime Minister. If Brown was to get rid of Darling this side of an election it would call into question his judgement in appointing him in the first place.
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