Alistair Darling: 'You Can't Just Tell Half The Story And Still Be Credible'

With the publication of his new memoir, the former chancellor talks about Gordon Brown, economic meltdown and the time he was locked out of the White House.












Alistair Darling's memoir contains an anecdote of such peerless absurdity, you literally could not make it up. The chancellor and Gordon Brown were visiting the White House in November 2008, for a crisis summit of leaders and finance ministers, and set off in a cavalcade from the British embassy. But such was the size and self-importance of Brown's entourage, who piled into the fleet of cars, that the chancellor was left to find himself a space in the very last car. When Brown's car pulled up before the steps of the White House, and the cavalcade drew to a halt behind, Darling was still at the back of the queue, stuck outside the gates on the street. He got out, walked up the drive to the door, and found it closed.

"It was a very funny feeling. You've seen the White House all your life, and then you're walking up the steps of this house, and the door's shut, and there's all the world's press behind you taking pictures, and I thought, well, what if no one answers? Because you'll look bloody silly walking back down the stairs."

What went through his mind? "Well, my thinking was – and I never thought I'd think this – I've never been so glad to see President Bush. Because the door opened, and there was the proprietor, the president of the United States."

As he recalls the moment he has a dry chuckle – the wry sort of funny-old-world laugh of someone long past the point when anything could upset him. But he wasn't laughing at the time, was he? "Well, as I walked up the drive, and especially when I had to negotiate terms with a guy with a machine-gun, no, at that stage I was getting very pissed off. I thought this is ridiculous. I just thought this is so typical of what is happening now. You know, [Brown's entourage] were totally absorbed, it was like they were there with the Sun King."

What did he say to Brown when he got inside? "Nothing," Darling says. "I don't think he even noticed."

There was always a touch of the eternal bridesmaid about Darling. He jokes that his obituary will bear the epithet A Safe Pair of Hands, which I suspect he would consider a compliment, and he has seemed most at ease in the background. But before his memoir even went on sale this week, pre-orders alone had already put it second place on Amazon's bestseller list – and its revelations about the depths of dysfunction within Downing Street have made it a political sensation. When I congratulate him on producing a bestseller he looks rather boyishly pleased, but says he's worried that people think he's written a gossipy Westminster kiss and tell – when he never really wanted to write about his relationship with Brown at all.

"I wanted to give my account of the banking crisis, to leave my record. But because the banking crisis became an economic crisis, the two are totally inter-related, and you can't tell what I did as chancellor without touching upon the other crises that hit the government. You just can't tell half the story – and to be at all credible, I have to touch on things that I still find difficult."

It may have been difficult, but he looks so much more relaxed than he ever did in office that I wonder if the memoir became a form of therapy, or at least catharsis. "No," he says very quickly. "No, I'm not someone who needs a cathartic moment." The denial has a hint of Scottish distaste for such self-indulgence – but it's so swift that I'm not entirely convinced."Well, maybe I actually do and I don't know," he concedes. "But it didn't start out that way."

He had to explain his difficulties with Brown, he says, because otherwise none of his story would make sense. For example, "You can't explain the reaction to the interview I did with you three years ago without going into what I regard as the more unpleasant aspects of political life." In August 2008 I interviewed him at his croft in Lewis, and his assessment of the economic crisis facing the world – "arguably the worst in 60 years" – provoked an almighty commotion, fuelled largely by Brown's own aides, who briefed the media that Darling was either deluded and plain wrong (or naive and unprofessional), or treacherously disloyal. Darling later described their assault on him as "the forces of hell".












Darling in Washington in 2008 at the summit during which he got locked out of the White House.

"In some ways," he says, "I owe a debt of gratitude to the briefers. If they had done the usual thing – said they were happy with the chancellor, he's doing his job – it would all have blown over. But as it was it will be remembered. Very few things in politics cut through – and this one did, it cut through with a vengeance. The only critical thing you could say, really, is that I should have said 100 and not 60 years."

What a lot of people won't understand, I say, is why you didn't ring up Brown and say I'm the chancellor, tell your minions to shut up? "Well, you know, I did. I said this is just making it worse for everybody." So what did Brown say? "He just said it wasn't his people. I said well, if it isn't then some imposters are making a remarkably good fist of it. Anyway," he says, breaking off with a brisk shake of the head, "this is just – " but then he stops again. "No," he corrects himself, "it's not water under the bridge, because that weekend really scarred me."

He insists that he didn't think he had said anything controversial, let alone disloyal. Amid the furore, however, some critics interpreted his interview as a calculated strategy to undermine Brown. In fact, Darling says, he hadn't wanted to give an interview at all. He just wanted to go on holiday, to his family croft on Lewis.

"So my cunning plan was to say you'd have to come to the Outer Hebrides; I hoped the Guardian's finances wouldn't stretch to that. But it clearly didn't work." Does he regret what he said? "No, I thought it was important to tell the truth." The problem was, Darling's view of the truth differed radically from Brown's, who was busy telling journalists that the credit crunch would be over within six months.

It was the first very public sign of a clash between No 10 and 11, but Darling had realised he was no longer part of Brown's inner circle as soon as they became neighbours. He still doesn't know why. Had Darling shared, I ask, his colleagues' worries about Brown's famously "psychologically flawed" character before he succeeded Tony Blair? From his rather vague and evasive answers, I'd say that he did not, and was as surprised as many others when behaviour he'd attributed to Brown's grievance with Blair – secrecy, tantrums, paranoia – didn't vanish with his relocation to No10.

The contrast between the two personalities that emerges from Darling's memoir is so extreme, the miracle has to be how much they managed to achieve in spite of it. The person who Darling says kept him sane was his wife Maggie, an infectiously gregarious and irreverent former political journalist whom I met in 2008 on Lewis. At the time I remember wondering how on earth she could put up with Brown, and marvelled at the difference between the two families. I last saw her during the general election campaign, when she invited some women to No11 for drinks. As guests arrived she plonked their coats on the bed in their bedroom, for all the world as if it were a student house party. At some point in the evening her husband came home, and after a bit of chat went to bed. Later, another guest – a little worse for wine – tottered down the hall to retrieve her coat, swung the bedroom door open, and found herself gazing at the chancellor of the exchequer in his pyjamas in bed. As she backed out, doubled over with mortification, nobody was more convulsed with giggles than his wife.

When they left Downing Street for good a few weeks later, he says there was no lump in his throat or tear in his eye. In fact, after five bizarre days of post-election shenanigans between the party leaders, Darling was so fed up he wanted to leave by the back door. Did it feel farcical by then? "It did. Sitting in the flat, watching the TV, with helicopters going round and round overhead, and they were starting to film the back door. So Margaret said: 'This is ridiculous, we're going out the front door.' And she was right. She said we did our best for all these years. Why would we sneak out the back door? Let's leave with our heads high."

But he says no bit of him was secretly relieved to have lost the election. So what will he do instead of frontbench politics? "You continue to do backbench politics." Then if this is the end of your ministerial career, I begin to say – but he quickly interrupts.

"Well, it may not be."

Normally, when ministers lose office and write their memoirs they are practically giddy with indifference to any ramifications. Darling doesn't give the slightest impression of having detached from political life, or stopped caring for a minute. "One of the things I've noticed in myself," he agrees, "is that in some of the dark days in government, you could hardly bear to listen to the radio or watch the telly. But I've noticed since being in opposition I probably listen to more current affairs than I ever did. My interest in politics is as alive as it's ever been."

Interest in Darling remains as alive as ever as well. In the mounting economic crisis, he is looking like one of the few politicians who might have a clue what to do, and the day after we meet I run into a Tory MP who says she can't wait to read his book. An awful lot of her colleagues, she adds, believe it's only thanks to Darling that the country isn't in even more of a mess.

"Yeah, but people are always nice to you when you leave," Darling says when I cite his widespread popularity. "It's like at a funeral. People are always terribly nice about the deceased even though they had plenty to say when you were alive."

In 2008 I asked him if leading Labour held any appeal to him, and he said no. "Well," he laughs, "I'm consistent. No, I'm not remotely interested in that, nothing's changed there. To be leader you have to want to do it, seven days a week, 24 hours a day, and I don't. I really don't. And on the way down from Edinburgh last week, when the phone started going about the leaks of my memoir, it brought back so many memories. And actually, I've enjoyed the last year. Because it's great when people don't phone you."

But he admits: "There are lots of times in the last year – or even now – when I would like to be involved and in government again. What is so frustrating is that we were actually coming out of recession when we left office."

In Darling's view, countries across Europe are making the same mistake as Britain's government by imagining that cuts will reduce their deficits. "That's true when the economy is working at full capacity. But it is not true when it isn't." There is still time, he says, for George Osborne to change course and invest public money to boost growth. But is that politically plausible? "There's lots of things you can do in politics if you execute the manoeuvre in an elegant enough manner."

Nonetheless, he acknowledges that the Tories have convinced many voters that the deficit is not a consequence of the recession, but of Labour's profligacy. This, he insists, is categorically untrue – "But you're right, it's a huge political problem for us. One of the challenges for both Eds is to cut through that, because I think the policy we have of a more measured approach to these things is perfectly credible, and independent commentators will say the same thing. There is every chance, the ground is there. But like everything else in politics, you have to take your moment."

Would Labour be doing better under David Miliband – the candidate Darling endorsed last year, and met in secret the previous year to discuss deposing their leader? "It's impossible to tell," is Darling's diplomatic reply. What about the claims made by Daily Telegraph bloggers and Tory cabinet ministers that Darling's book has damaged Labour's chance of re-election? "I certainly hope not. Would I write it in five years' time, just before the next election? No. That would be damaging. But my book's main purpose was to chronicle the economic and banking crisis."

He thinks Europe is on the brink of another spectacular crisis, because Greece cannot possibly deliver its austerity package, and Europe's leaders are incapable of taking unified action to prevent catastrophe. "I know the EU sufficiently well," he says wearily, "and I've been in enough meetings to know that nothing will happen until it looks like the thing's about to blow up." What the eurozone urgently needs, he says, is a plan – any plan.

"Markets are rational and irrational at the same time. They are irrational in saying they want to cut debt immediately and they want growth, because you can't get the two. Markets are now worried about growth. What's really spooking them at the moment is that in Europe they don't see a plan, they see the eurozone coming together, making an announcement, and a few weeks later it seems to be unravelling. That is what really throws people. What people are looking for is, what is your plan?"

As for himself, he says his only plan for now is to make no plans. He doesn't know if or when he would return to the frontbench, or what else he would do. For a long time it was always assumed that if anyone was going to follow Downing Street with a major international finance position, it would be Brown. No one predicted that it would be Darling – but when I ask if he'd be interested in such a post, his reply is interestingly evasive. "Well, there aren't many of them – so, um, you know," and he lets the sentence tail off into silence. But according to the Westminster rumour mill, Osborne is ready to nominate Darling to lead the IMF if its new incumbent, Christine Lagarde, is forced to stand down in the face of a corruption trial in France.

"It's news to me," Darling says. "No, there have been no discussions about it – and nor will there be."

Would such a post appeal? "Er, er, well, put it another way, I need something to keep my mind occupied. I'm young, and I'd like to practise what I preach and work well beyond 65. So what I'll do I don't know."

Support Grows For Keeping 50p Tax Rate

Politicians from Labour and the Liberal Democrats joined forces with trade unions to argue for a retention of the 50p top rate of income tax after 20 leading economists called for it to be scrapped “as soon as possible” in a letter to the FT.










Alistair Darling, the chancellor who introduced the rate in 2009, and Tim Farron, the Lib Dem president, said on Wednesday that lowering the top rate of tax would be unfair while the economy was still in difficulty.

Mr Darling said: “This has got to stay in place until we get out of the crisis. It would be grossly unfair to remove it. In the long run you have got to keep your tax rates internationally competitive which means something like the two rates we used to have. To remove it today would be grossly unfair. If they do not pay their taxes then it is poorer people who are going to pay.”

He was supported by Mr Farron, who said scrapping the 50p rate would be “phenomenally immoral and send an appalling message to the overwhelming majority of hard-working people in this country”.

Ed Balls, Labour shadow chancellor, also weighed in: “If we really are all in this together then the right priority to boost the stalled economy now should be temporarily reversing the VAT rise, which is costing families with children around £450 a year. This temporary tax cut would help to kick-start the recovery and give a much needed boost to millions of people regardless of their income.

“If the chancellor really wants to know how effective the top rate of tax is he should immediately ask the Office for Budget Responsibility, not just HMRC, to produce a report genuinely independent of government.”

Their warnings came after the Trades Union Congress also took issue with the suggestion of an immediate tax cut for top earners.

Brendan Barber, general secretary of the Trades Union Congress called the economists’ opinion “monstrously unfair”, adding: “At a time when cuts are biting hard and ordinary people are suffering the biggest squeeze on their living standards in years, the last thing we need is a handout to the wealthiest in our society.”

But DeAnne Julius, the former member of the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee and one of the signatories of the letter, defended her position to the BBC, saying many hedge funds had already moved to Switzerland and that, if marginal rates were raised on a small number of highly mobile people, “You end up not collecting the tax that you’d hoped to.”

“Only by returning to an internationally competitive tax regime will Britain enjoy long-term sustainable economic growth,” the economists say in their letter.

The signatories include many figures not usually associated with conservative causes, such as Bob Rowthorn of Cambridge University, and two former members of the Bank of England’s policy committee, Ms Julius and Sushil Wadhwani.

George Osborne, chancellor of the exchequer, is already facing pressure from the Tory right and CBI employers’ organisation to scrap the “temporary” top tax rate.

The Treasury believed that the 50p rate, introduced by the former Labour government in April 2010 on annual taxable incomes above £150,000, would eventually raise £2.7bn a year. Combined with restrictions on income tax relief for pension contributions and the abolition of the income tax personal allowance for people with annual incomes above £100,000, last year’s tax increases on the rich were designed to raise £7bn per annum.

The economists dispute these estimates, arguing the 50p rate “punishes” wealth and entrepreneurship. “It is often portrayed as a justified tax on the rich, but the economic damage it causes means that it is against the interests even of ordinary workers who don’t pay it,” they write.

Last month Mr Osborne said “there’s not much point in having taxes that are economically inefficient”. He added that the rate was uncompetitive internationally and targeted wealthy people who were already paying taxes on their capital gains.

Government officials, however, have suggested that the top rate is unlikely to be scrapped until 2013 at the earliest, when a pay freeze affecting millions of public sector workers is due to be lifted.

Nick Clegg, Liberal Democrat leader, will insist the 50p top rate can only be scrapped if other measures, such as a property or “mansion” tax, are introduced to ensure the wealthy pay their “fair share” towards cutting the deficit. The Lib Dems will also insist that the 50p rate’s abolition is accompanied by accelerated moves to raise the annual tax threshold to £10,000.

Other leading economists are more sceptical. Paul Johnson, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies and not a signatory of the letter, said it was much too early to give up on the 50p rate: “The Treasury has been taking a punt on whether [the 50p rate] will raise money. It is taking a risk, but it is not a stupid punt.”

George Osborne Cheers Alistair Darling For Stabbing Ed Balls

It is not often that one sees a man enter the Chamber with a dagger protruding from the back of his neck. Ed Balls attempted to make light of this encumbrance, but without success.












The Tories loved reminding everyone that Mr Balls has been stabbed in broad daylight by a member of his own side. The attack was launched by the mild-mannered Alistair Darling, whose work as Labour’s last Chancellor of the Exchequer was persistently sabotaged by Mr Balls, and by Mr Balls’s patron, Gordon Brown.

Beware the vengeance of a mild-mannered man who has been treated abominably for years on end. Not since Sir Geoffrey Howe finished off Margaret Thatcher has a former Chancellor done such damage to a member of his own party as Mr Darling has done to Mr Balls.

George Osborne wasted no time, at Treasury Questions, in taking advantage of this opportunity. When Mr Balls called on the Chancellor to “repeat the bank bonus tax” imposed by Labour, Mr Osborne replied that he was not going to rely on the advice of Treasury officials, but on “the advice I’ve been given by the last Chancellor of the Exchequer”, someone Mr Balls was known to be “very close to”, namely Mr Darling, who had said the bank bonus tax would “have to be a one-off”.

This was followed by repeated references to Mr Darling’s newly published misery memoir, in which he describes how he was undermined by Mr Brown, and by the former Prime Minister’s brutal henchmen, notably Mr Balls.

Mr Osborne assured us that we are “going to be hearing a lot more” about this book. One rather doubts whether Mr Darling wanted the present Chancellor to plug his work with such enthusiasm, but it is too late now.

Mr Balls flushed, shook his head and ran his hand in a horizontal motion from side to side with the palm facing downwards: a gesture indicative of his conviction that the economy is flat-lining.

Labour MPs tried their hardest to embarrass Mr Osborne by pointing to the recent, disappointing growth figures: but the Chancellor just retaliated by pointing to Mr Darling’s memoirs.

Iain Wright (Lab, Hartlepool) attempted to change the subject by referring to Harold Macmillan as “the most successful Chancellor and Prime Minister that Eton has ever produced”, and by quoting Macmillan’s reply when asked what was most likely to blow a government off course: “Events, dear boy, events.”

Mr Osborne accused Mr Wright of “being rather unfair on Hugh Dalton who I think also went to Eton”. It is true that Dalton, who was a rather unappealing Labour Chancellor, went to Eton.

But Mr Osborne ought to have said Mr Wright was being far more unfair to William Gladstone, an Etonian whose achievements as Chancellor and Prime Minister make Macmillan’s look distinctly modest.

The trouble with Mr Osborne is that he is only really interested in the unhappy history of the period 2007-10, as related in Mr Darling’s memoir. By the time this is over we are all going to be bored rigid.

Darling: EU Must Get A Grip On Greece

The European Union must "get a grip" of Greece's economic woes before the contagion spreads, ex-chancellor Alistair Darling has said.

In a gloomy assessment of Europe's economic prospects, Mr Darling told Sky News the EU had to find a solution to the problems in Greece.

He warned a failure to tackle the problem would have a "damaging impact" on European banks and governments.

"That's why the EU has got to be realistic and at long last do something that actually fixes the problem and not this series of short-term fixes that keep failing, that keep coming back," he told Jeff Randall Live.

"This is what they've been doing now for the last 18 months and it doesn't work."

Mr Darling offered the pessimistic analysis of EU economies in an interview also critical of former prime ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.











Economic troubles provoked clashes on the streets of Greece.

He was speaking in advance of the publication of Back From The Brink, a memoir of his time as chancellor during the financial crisis.

The former chancellor said he had to elaborate on his fraught relationships within the government in order to tell the story of the turmoil that engulfed the markets in 2008.

He said Mr Blair and Mr Brown had been allowed to assume too much control.

"In the 1990s, we were happy in some ways to let Tony and Gordon run the show - it wasn't quite a dictatorship - they made the changes Labour was desperately needing to make but hadn't done so.

"The problem was the decision-making became increasingly centralised," he said, adding policies on tuition fees and the economy would have benefited from wider debate.

"Collective discussion, the benefit of getting a combined wisdom, is I think something we didn't pay enough attention to," he added.











The ex-chancellor explained his criticism of Gordon Brown.

Asked if Ed Balls was among those who unleashed the "forces of hell" in negative briefings about him during the financial crisis, Mr Darling refused to attack his Labour colleague.

He said he backed the whole Labour front-bench, including the shadow chancellor.

Mr Darling said he acknowledged Labour did not always get it right in government and expressed regret more had not been done to fully implement welfare reform.

He cited the minimum wage as one of his party's greatest achievements.

An MP since 1987, Mr Darling was chancellor between 2007-2010 and also served as secretary of state for work and pensions, transport and trade and industry.

His outspoken remarks since leaving office are considered to be a contrast to the more low-key style he adopted in government.

Alistair Darling: I Should Have Done More To Force Gordon Brown Out Of Office

Alistair Darling has admitted that he should have done more to force Gordon Brown from Downing Street, and accused the former prime minister of presiding over a government which had a “permanent air of chaos and crisis”.











The former chancellor said that Labour would have had a chance of “getting through” the financial crisis if Gordon Brown had been more honest about the scale of the problem and agreed to announce more cuts ahead of the election.

Promoting his memoirs he said that he, and other Labour Cabinet ministers, should have done “something” about Mr Brown.

But the Conservatives seized on Mr Darling’s comments that Labour did not have a credible economic policy before the election, pointing out that Ed Miliband and Ed Balls are still backing the “Darling plan.”

Mr Darling’s withering criticism of the former prime minister is contained in his new book which is published this week. He describes how the two men – formerly very close political and personal friends, fell out badly over how to react to the 2008 financial crisis and its aftermath.

And he indicates that Labour would have done better at last year’s election if they had followed a more realistic plan to tackle the record deficit.

He told the BBC: “What it boils down to is, we could have got through this, there was a political way through it - actually we did get some kudos from the way we managed to stop the banking system from collapsing.

“We could have dealt with the recession, but the end point was, we then had to say having done all this, you had to get your borrowing back down without the problem - which frankly I think is the current Government's policy - which seems to be to squeeze the life out of the economy.

“We could have got through this. We didn't - because of the disagreement at the very top.

“The relationship between me and Gordon got progressively more difficult. We had a fundamental disagreement in 2008 as to how bad this was going to be, and then during 2009 we had this whole argument about what you do about the deficit.”

Such was the turmoil and lack of agreement between No10 and the Treasury over Budget measures, Mr Darling describes how he was forced to write parts of the speech “literally until the last minute.”

He added: “If you don't have a credible economic policy, you are simply not at the races, and our problem was it was so blindingly obvious to the outside world that the two of us, Gordon and myself, were at odds, that it really hampered us when it came to the election of 2010.”

Michael Fallon, the Conservative Party deputy chairman, sought to link Mr Darling’s disclosures with Labour’s current economic policy.

He said: “Alistair Darling has now admitted that Labour did not have a credible economic policy last year because they refused to say what spending they would cut.

“Yet Gordon Brown's protege Ed Balls is still in denial by sticking to the same course of more spending and more borrowing. And it's extraordinary that Ed Balls was putting political plotting ahead of the national interest in the middle of an economic crisis.

“This shows why Labour should never trusted with the keys to our economy ever again.”

Mr Darling admits that he held talks with David Miliband, who was considered the front-runner to replace Mr Brown, about forcing the prime minister from office. However, both men decided not to move against Mr Brown.

He admitted that had probably been a mistake and he and fellow Labour ministers should have acted.

Asked if senior politicians should have done more about Brown's leadership, he said: "If you want to criticise us collectively, perhaps we should have done something [about Brown].”

Mr Darling said he was “marked” by the reaction of Mr Brown and his allies after he gave an interview in which he described the crisis as likely to be the worst to hit Britain “for 60 years.”

Gordon Brown And Alistair Darling 'Were At Odds From The Start'

Former chancellor faced interference from the then PM, who wished to play down the economic risk from the banking crisis.












Alistair Darling faced interference from the prime minister.

Gordon Brown repeatedly pressured Alistair Darling to change his economic forecasts almost from the outset of his premiership, it has emerged.

As the former chancellor prepared to publish his memoir, Back from the Brink, former government insiders revealed the full extent of the split between the two men at the top of the Labour administration.

From the autumn of 2007, as Brown agonised over whether to call a snap general election, Darling faced interference from Number 10 as he drew up his first pre-budget report, with the prime minister's allies urging him to play down the risks of an economic slowdown in the wake of the collapse of Northern Rock.

Northern Rock's bosses blamed "extreme conditions" in the markets for the bank's collapse, but Brown and Darling clashed over how hard the turmoil would hit the wider economy. Darling feared the impact would be severe, but Brown was determined to stick to the line that the "fundamentals" remained sound.

Former insiders say Brown, who had kept Treasury officials on a tight rein during his tenure as chancellor, wanted Darling to overrule his cautious civil servants. "Gordon never understood why Alistair didn't have the authority over his civil servants that he had," one source told the Observer. The pre-budget report of October 2007 predicted that GDP would expand by 2% to 2.5% in 2008 as the UK shrugged off the effects of the credit crunch. In the event, it contracted by 0.1%.

The relationship continued to deteriorate as the economy slid into recession. Darling was attacked by Brown's spin doctors in the summer of 2008 after saying the world was facing the deepest economic crisis in 60 years. He later said it felt as though the "forces of hell" had been unleashed against him.

By the spring the two were still at loggerheads as they struggled to formulate a response to the crisis. Darling wanted the forecasts in the 2008 budget to show the full extent of the damage to public finances of a prolonged economic slowdown, while the prime minister, who had promised to abolish boom and bust, still hoped the downturn would prove short-lived.

The relationship between the two men had soured so much by the time Labour lost power that they now see little of each other. One Brown ally predicted that the former prime minister would "go berserk" over the revelations. "I'm just glad I'm not the one reading out the extracts," he said.

Leaks of Darling's book, published on the website Labour Uncut last week, also showed the bitter relationship between the chancellor and Sir Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England, who said he believed the chancellor was "not his intellectual equal".

Darling To Expose 'Volcanic' Brown Government

Former Chancellor Alistair Darling is reportedly set to detail tensions within Gordon Brown's government at the height of the financial crisis in a forthcoming memoir.











Mr Brown and Mr Darling in March 2010 ahead of the General Election.

According to extracts seen by Labour Uncut, Mr Darling will claim Mr Brown's moods became increasingly "brutal and volcanic" in 2008.

'Back from the Brink: 1,000 Days at No 11' is said to detail a complete breakdown in trust between the Prime Minister and Chancellor.

Mr Darling reportedly singles out Ed Balls and Shriti Vadhera as key allies of Mr Brown, who he says were running what amounted to a parallel Treasury within Government.

He claims to have refused to have Ms Vadhera in his team, describing her as "only happy if there was blood on the floor - preferably that of her colleagues".

Alistair Darling's memoirs should give Ed Miliband some concerns about Ed Balls' suitability to be shadow chancellor.Conservative party chairman Baroness Warsi

Yvette Cooper was accepted as chief secretary to the treasury in January 2008, but Mr Darling reportedly says she was put there to "keep an eye" on him.

He also allegedly confirms the widely reported rumour that in 2009 Mr Brown tried to sack him as chancellor and offer him another junior role in cabinet.

Mr Darling threatened to walk out of government and Mr Brown, severely weakened by the economic crisis and plummeting poll ratings, relented and let him remain at No 11.

Karen Duffy, the publicity director of publisher Atlantic books, said she was unable to comment on the accuracy of the reports.











Mr Brown & Mr Balls are allegedly accused of running a parallel Treasury.

"We're not confirming or denying," she told Sky News, because the contents of the book must remain confidential because they have agreed a deal with a newspaper ahead of publication next week.

Conservative party chairman Sayeeda Warsi seized on the claims as proof that key Labour figures put party infighting above the nation's interests.

"Alistair Darling's memoirs should give Ed Miliband some concerns about Ed Balls' suitability to be shadow chancellor," she said.

"Ed Balls recently claimed that he 'did his politics on the record', but he has already been shown to have been at the heart of the plot to oust Tony Blair.

"Now Alistair Darling accuses him of running a shadow treasury operation within his own government.

"No wonder Labour left the nation's finances in such a mess when they put party political plotting above the national interest."