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."

Chancellor Tells World Leaders To 'Show Courage'

George Osborne today called on global leaders to show "courage" and work together to fend off another financial crisis and keep the recovery on track.


















The Chancellor warned the "future prosperity of millions" was at stake without decisive action to tackle problems in the world economy.

He joined finance ministers from Singapore, Canada, South Africa and Australia in demanding reforms in a range of areas to go along with tough deficit-cutting measures as the head of the World Bank warned global stock markets were entering a "new danger zone".

Robert Zoellick said the response by leaders in America and Europe to economic challenges in recent weeks had led many in the markets to "lose confidence in economic leadership of some of the key countries".

That was echoed by Mr Osborne and the other finance ministers, who wrote today: "We all knew the recovery from the global financial crisis would be prolonged. However, the more serious malaise today is the lack of confidence in efforts by governments to address the structural problems that underpin weak growth, high unemployment and unsustainable fiscal balance sheets."

Calling for a "new global response", they outlined reforms of regulation, banks, closer eurozone integration and a push for trade to go alongside fiscal discipline.

In an attempt to set the agenda before major meetings in the autumn, they wrote in the Financial Times: "The biggest barriers are political, not economic, so what is needed is political leadership and courage." They added: "We have more than our credibility at stake. We have the future prosperity of millions of fellow citizens to safeguard."

The intervention follows a turbulent week on the stock markets after concerns about debt in the eurozone and the downgrading of the US economy.

French president Nicolas Sarkozy and German chancellor Angela Merkel are meeting tomorrow to try to thrash out a plan to tackle the crisis on the Continent.

It comes amid further concerns about the British economy and a Coalition row over scrapping the 50p top rate of income tax. A Chartered Institute of Personnel Development and KPMG survey of 1,000 employers found unemployment is set to rise this year.

Meanwhile senior Liberal Democrats are pushing the Government to consider a tax on the richest homeowners as a trade-off for scrapping the 50p rate of income tax.

Mr Osborne gave his strongest hint yet that the top rate will be abolished, saying it was "very uncompetitive". But scrapping it would lead to demands from the Lib-Dems for the richest to be taxed in another way - possibly through a levy on homes.