What Ed Miliband Should Say At Labour Conference, But Won’t

It is now beyond question that Ed Miliband is moving his party to the left, or redefining the centre ground if you prefer, or drawing a line under the New Labour era. Or whatever.










The latest symbolic move has been to back Palestinian statehood in advance of a vote at the UN. This is a peculiar decision that makes no real sense before knowing what the Palestinians are putting on the table, except to send a strong message to the party faithful that Ed Miliband is shifting policy on the Middle East. This line on Israel/Palestine is one that Tony Blair and Gordon Brown would never have countenanced and that is the whole point.

Ed Miliband is determined to ditch the legacy of the Blair-Brown era (which is odd considering that he is its creature) and I can’t help thinking this is a terrible strategic error.

The opposition is hamstrung by the fact that it still hasn’t found the right language to take on the government. Miliband has squeezed himself into a tiny ideological sliver, where he can’t move any further to the left for fear of inviting ridicule, but can’t entirely embrace the achievements of the Blair-Brown years either.

In welfare to work, education and health, the Cameroons are engaged in implementing the Blairite reform agenda. The logic of Ed Miliband in the new post-New Labour era should make it possible to oppose this from the Left. But there are still too many Blairites around him to quite pull this off. With Liam Byrne in charge of the policy review it will be impossible to dump the New Labour policy agenda in its entirety.

Instead of trying to persuade people that Cameron is a Thatcherite in disguise, Labour should concentrate on questioning the Tories’ competence in government. Ed Miliband’s conference speech should recognise that all the most adventurous ideas of the new government are stolen from New Labour and give them a cautious welcome. He should then say that the job of opposition is to forensically examine the government’s record on delivery and stand back.

He won’t do this, of course, because to embrace the Blairite legacy would mean immediate death within the party.

Lid Dem Conference: Portait Of A Party In Denial

Facing disastrous polls, stuck with an unpopular leader and short of star names, the Lib Dems should be panicking at their conference. So why does it feel like a holiday camp?












Nick Clegg on stage at the party conference.

Arriving at the Liberal Democrat conference at Birmingham's ICC on Monday, I'm confronted with a strange, becalmed atmosphere. At first I think everyone present is still in a state of shock, reeling from the double-pronged assault on the senses presented over the weekend by Hugh Grant's appearance and the minister of state for children and families' attempt at standup comedy, but it appears to be something else, a sort of blithe cheeriness.

I've never been to a party conference before and I've come expecting dissent. But apparently I've missed the boat: I should have been at the spring conference in Sheffield, when there were "a lot of angry people inside the conference and out", the latter group including 4,000 people marching in protest at the cuts. Now, the delegates at least are all pacified, convinced that a corner has been turned, that a line has been drawn under the tuition fees debacle, that public anger at the cuts is due to subside. The spirit of the party who in 1981 leapt to their feet, fleetingly convinced by David Steel's line about going home to their constituencies and preparing for government, is very much abroad.

The moment when a lone voice shouts: "Rubbish!" as Danny Alexander suggests Gordon Brown spent too much money turns out to be a dizzying pinnacle of insurrectionary excitement that the conference will never scale again. It's all glossy optimism, and woe betide anyone who attempts to suggest that said glossy optimism might be bordering on the delusional. A man from the BBC quotes a few poll figures at a Guardian Q&A panel, but no one wants to know. Someone bellows: "Did Miliband send you?" A woman seated behind me starts pretending to snore. "You're a miserable sod," snaps Lynne Featherstone, the equalities minister. Everyone cheers. The BBC man leaves.

My own search for dissent is equally fruitless. You would think that somewhere within the ICC lurked hand-wringing angst at the ongoing state of affairs, desperate to unburden itself to a representative of the press, but if it's there, I can't find it. I try Liberal Youth, surely at the sharp end of public displeasure thanks to the the spectre of tuition fees, something they continue to oppose. Nothing but visions of a bright future, in which Britain suddenly wakes up to the brakes put on Tory policy by the presence of the Lib Dems in the coalition and flocks to their bonded side.

So I try the people who look like party traditionalists, who are substantially easier to spot than some reports have suggested. One idea posited in the papers is that the very fabric of the party has changed, that the traditional beards-and-sandals Lib Dems have been displaced by the hard-nosed political operators in Heston Blumenthal specs. If you wanted to prove it, you could certainly get a shot of the delegates that doesn't feature anyone who looks like a Daily Telegraph cartoonist's idea of what a Lib Dems looks like, but you couldn't take it with a wide-angle lens, and you might have to crop it in Photoshop later. They're everywhere, the beards ranging from 50s jazz enthusiast to competitor in The Great Egg Race. Perhaps somewhere behind them lurks the simmering discontent conspicuous by its absence elsewhere. Perhaps not. They clearly like power – "before, you'd debate a policy at conference and think, well, the absolute best that's going to happen is that another party's going to nick that idea," offers one local councillor – and its trappings, or at least some of them. "There are a lot more lobbyists around conference these days," shudders one delegate, principles being something that are noticeably easier to keep when no one's interested in buying them. But for most part, even the lobbyists' baleful presence seems to be cancelled out by the positives, high among which ranks the preponderance of TV cameras and microphones. You can't walk far without overhearing someone expressing astonished delight at being canvassed for their opinions by the media: "I've been waylaid by Anglia TV!" cries one elderly gentleman.

The mood even seems to surprise Nick Clegg. "Heavens! What docility!" he says during a Q&A on Monday afternoon. "It's like a North Korean party conference." One theory is that it's all evidence of the redoubtable Lib Dem character, forged in endless adversity. You hear a lot about the time under Paddy Ashdown when Lib Dems were represented by an asterisk in the opinion polls: after taking into account the 3% margin of error, they were unable to say that the party had any discernible support at all. However bad the polls get, they've seen worse, even when the polls strongly suggest they haven't. Another is that they realise power is a temporary blip in a life of opposition and they're trying their best to relish it, which necessarily involves ignoring what's going to happen in three-and-a-half years' time.

The most prosaic answer is that a lot of delegates seem to view the conference as a kind of holiday. Like holidaymakers who've paid a lot of money to get away from it all – "more than £1,000, less than £2,000", suggests one delegate when I ask him how much it's cost him to be here; "more than a week in the south of France", offers another – they don't really care to be reminded of what's going on back home. "Do I wish that there was more robust debate?" frowns one local councillor. "No. I get enough of that on the doorstep."

And, if you wanted to relax, there are worse places to come than the Lib Dem conference, where it's frequently hard not to be lulled into a torpor by what's going on onstage. Part of the problem is that the Lib Dems are evidently in desperately short supply of stars. On Monday night, Vince Cable is booked to speak at three fringe meetings at exactly the same time. Outside, a jovial Brummie police officer approaches a gaggle of press photographers, apparently baffled at how they prosecute their business: "Have you lot got a Who's Who or something? I haven't got a clue who any of them are." His theory seems to be borne out when you visit the Liberal Image stall, where a Lib Dem hi-visibility jacket – something a cautious man might think twice about wearing in public – will set you back £14.50. There's a selection of badges available featuring the faces of the party's MPs: they seem to be doing a brisk trade in Welsh Lib Dem leader Kirsty Williams – "we've sold about 12" – but you'd defy anyone other than a party wonk to recognise most of the others.

But the real problem is that what stars they have are hopeless at public speaking. It's hard not to feel that party president Tim Farron's rise is predicated on possessing an identifiable personality, something almost everyone else who gets in front of a microphone seems to have been surgically deprived of. You can mock Nick Clegg's closing speech all you like, but it's like Alexander the Great's address at the battle of Issus next to the orations of Chris Huhne, a man who sounds like he's reading out the building's fire regulations even when he's quoting John Donne (he gives a speech quoting John Donne for the specific purpose of proving this). He gets a standing ovation at the end of it, which makes you marvel afresh at the dogged resilience of your average Lib Dem delegate. They're determined to be roused regardless of whether what's on offer is rousing or lethal.

Given the climate, you start to find yourself baffled as to why Sarah Teather's standup routine went down so badly. In fairness, her awful jokes were no more awful than anyone else's, and everybody else's seem to be greeted with widespread hysteria. Vince Cable tells one about bankers having their pants around their ankles, "showing us their assets – if they've got any". A woman two rows in front of me nearly dies laughing. Perhaps what Teather should have done was mention the bankers, which it quickly becomes apparent is the Lib Dem politician's equivalent of Peter Kaye saying "GARLIC BREAD?": no matter how many times you hear it, it always seems to get a round of applause.

The reliable arrival of banker gags aside nothing really seems to be happening. Journalists looking for something to report are reduced to making headlines out of the fact that Huhne is sorry about the effect that his affair had on his wife. But even at a Lib Dem conference where nothing appears to be happening, there's always the Glee Club, the ritual last night of conference knees-up. It's existence is – at last! – a matter of some controversy within the party. There are those who think it's part of a rich, glorious and idiosyncratic tribal tradition. There are those who clearly view its existence with profound embarrassment: "Lembit often MCs," says one local councillor, darkly. To the impartial observer, however, it simply represents an opportunity to have your mind repeatedly blown: if you thought the general air of positivity at the conference was a bit unreal, then the Glee Club is on hand to teach you that "unreal" is very much a relative concept. You don't even have to go to get the effect of being subject to an intense hallucinogenic experience. You just have to pick up the songbook, which is the best £3.50 you could spend at the Lib Dem conference, Liberal Image's enticing selection of badges featuring MPs notwithstanding.

For some reason, I'd expected it to largely consist of 19th-century political songs: The Land, stirring stuff about free trade and Gladstone. They're certainly present, but they're pretty much dealt with by page six. It's what's in the remaining 52 pages that knocks you sideways, not least when you get to the song about the coalition set to the tune of Making Your Mind Up by Bucks Fizz: "You gotta Lib it up and then you gotta Con it down, coz if you believe that our coalition can hit the top you've gotta play around."

By the time I arrive, Lembit Opik is very much in evidence, playing his mouth organ to a less dismayed reaction than you might expect. Some Welsh delegates favour the room with a rendition of Cwn Rhondda: if nothing else, it permanently punctures the myth of Wales as the land of song. Paddy Ashdown does a little standup routine. Tim Farron takes the stage and performs a comical version of That's Not My Name by the Ting Tings: "They call me Shirley, but I'm not a girlie." There has been some discussion at conference about the necessity for the Liberal Democrats to convince the British public that they're different from the other parties. If all else fails, they could always show them this. In the corner, a lobbyist looks on, wearing the kind of frozen, aghast expression that makes me think of the first-night audience at Springtime for Hitler in The Producers.

The next day, at a fringe meeting just before Nick Clegg's speech, the guy from Ipsos Mori lets them have it with both barrels. His Powerpoint presentation opens with a slide reading HOW DEEP IS THE HOLE?, but not all of it is as upbeat as that: if his news was any worse, he'd be wreathed in smoke and glowing green. Fifty-eight per cent of people who voted Liberal Democrat at the last election wouldn't again. A quarter of former supporters have swung to Labour. The Lib Dem voters that are left admire Margaret Thatcher. And, for the benefit of anyone who tends to the view that they've had worse, Nick Clegg is the least popular Lib Dem leader ever, beating a record David Steel has held since 1988 by 4%.

On and on it goes, until you wonder what Clegg can possibly say to lift their spirits – what price a new summer schools initiative and a few swings at Labour against the news that more than half your voters have deserted? – but they go bananas. Afterwards, I see one of the Liberal Youth activists, who's eager to tell me how encouraged he feels. The councillor who had more than enough robust debate on the doorstep is bucked, ready to face as much robust debate as the world can throw at her. Off they go, boundless optimism and Lembit's harmonica ringing in their ears.

The Liberal Democrats Aren’t Especially Liberal – Or Even Democratic

The junior Coalition partner’s policies have made a mockery of its historic name.












What is Sarah Teather's party actually delivering for Britain?

If the Liberal Democrats didn’t exist, under what circumstances would you choose to create them? I’ll assume that it’s the “Liberal” bit of their historical accident of a name that matters (not many anti-democrats run for election these days). If we did feel the need for a Liberal Party, I guess it would be because neither the Labour nor Tory organisations were being sufficiently, well, liberal in their policy-making.

Ten years of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown making illegal anything that moved, while repeatedly trying to give the state the power to lock us up without charge for longer and longer periods? Yes, I can see a need for some more liberalism; that there could be a useful role for a party to react viscerally against Labour’s criminalising tendencies. Ten years of Margaret Thatcher? I’m hardly one to criticise my political hero, but I can’t deny that prolonged exposure to her governing style might make a voter yearn for something a little less prescriptive; a little more laissez-faire in matters social. Regardless of your own political disposition, then, I don’t think it’s hard to make the case that political space could exist for a party which prioritised the autonomy of the individual over either stateist or corporatist collectivism.

Now imagine that you are a Liberal Democrat. Your organisation has been in the wilderness for 80 years, since the time of Lloyd George. The general election of 2010 gives you the chance to share government with the Conservatives; this is the first time in recent history that an administration will have a serious Liberal presence. How would you behave? Me, I would be bending over backwards to demonstrate that not only is a liberal instinct a useful one to bring to the art of government, but that it also makes sense to have that instinct embodied by my organisation. Anyone anyone can call themselves a “liberal”. The trick is to convince voters that such an instinct requires a party to carry it.

Instead, what has happened? Andrew Lansley’s Health Bill, which made a tentative step towards liberalisation of health provision in the UK, is first of all postponed, and then watered down, largely at the behest of the Lib Dems. Even after the Bill passed the Commons this week, Baroness (Shirley) Williams and the dis-elected ex-MP Evan Harris continued to mutter darkly and publicly about their inability to support it. Lib Dems ensured that the planned GP consortia – supposed to act for us, the patients – will include hospital doctors and nurses; a prioritisation of the producer over the patient. Unelected peer and dis-elected ex‑MP – I withdraw my opening remarks about the party’s name: they’re not even democratic, let alone liberal.

Also this week, Nick Clegg gave a speech about the Coalition’s flagship free schools. These schools are the last, best hope of those children failed by local education authorities. Academic excellence through freedom of choice: what could be more liberal than that? Instead, Mr Clegg chose to focus on the importance of preventing anyone running such a school from making a profit – profit is bad, apparently, because successful schools might use the money to expand – and went out of his way to support an even greater role for councils – the LEAs – in controlling access. In a straight choice, the Lib Dem leader prioritises the producer interest.

I could go on. Lib Dems also want to delay the election of local police commissioners. Anti-democratic again; and when was denying a voice to the people a “liberal” characteristic? And I’ve not mentioned the party’s support for the Human Rights Act, largely because it defies parody, let alone analysis. “Votes for prisoners”, say Lib Dems. It’s not quite the heady fight of the People’s Budget of 1909, is it?

Ah yes, say Lib Dem activists, but think of all the good we bring to the Coalition. When pressed, they trumpet the lack of recognition of marriage in the tax system. I’m not clear why it’s liberal to penalise the natural pair-bonding affinity of human mammals, but there you are. They also claim to have secured the increase in the personal allowance for the poorest taxpayers, as well as the retention – thus far – of the 50p top rate.

The 50p top rate is economically illiterate, and needn’t detain us. Symbolism does matter, though, and if keeping it there for a few months longer means that those such as Simon Hughes (“Champion of University Access”, no less) continue to vote with the Government, so be it. But did we need the Lib Dems to make the case for the increase in personal allowances? Tories have campaigned against the complex and inefficient recycling of income from the poor, to the government, and then back to the poor, for years. More importantly, the Right-wing view of tax (to reduce it wherever possible) is truly liberal, because it seeks to free people from state dependency. Lib Dems view tax as an instrument of social engineering; hence the posturing over 50p.

Eighty years in the wilderness, 80 years protecting the flame, and they can’t even mount a coherent case for electoral reform (“AV is a miserable little compromise” – Nick Clegg. But then: “Vote for AV” – Nick Clegg). Measured as the opportunity to show that British liberalism deserves the vehicle of its own party, coalition has been a disaster for the Lib Dems.

We have to face up to this political category error. Just because we can all agree that there’s a need for some liberalism in our politics, just because some unpopular politicians have given themselves that name, we’ve taken the Liberal Democrats at their own valuation. But Shirley Williams and Evan Harris are not liberals, and nor are the other former leaders and big Lib Dem beasts who haunt the media airwaves with a greater prominence than the paucity of their electoral support could ever justify.

Not that a political position has to be popular in order to be worth holding; and if a party wants to act as a pressure group for the producer interest in health and education, or as a supporter of judicial activism on Human Rights, or to call for ever-greater European integration (as Danny Alexander did this week), then good luck to it. But it shouldn’t mis-name itself.

Where the Lib Dems have been politically effective in the Coalition, they have been anything but liberal. And when they claim to be liberal, they are merely copying policy which the larger party would implement anyway. Neither tactic makes them a worthwhile coalition partner for a Conservative; worse, from the Lib Dem point of view, neither tactic has demonstrated that the 80 years without them were a political loss for Britain. If the Liberal Democrats didn’t already exist, to answer my opening question, I suspect that few would contemplate breathing life into the politically unattractive, social democratic clay from which they are fashioned. We already have a party to represent the sectional producer interest. It’s called “Labour”.

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."

David Cameron: A Professional Who Plays Like Anmateur

Who will trip David Cameron up? The most likely answer is “himself”.












The Prime Minister’s scorn for his opponent, and laughter at his own jokes, suggest a man without a care in the world.

The ease with which Mr Cameron dominates Ed Miliband is becoming a bit offensive. It is like watching a one-sided cricket match: any spectator of a sporting disposition is bound to wish for a closer game.

The Labour leader runs in to bowl six of the most awkward deliveries he can devise – this week to do with police commissioners and NHS waiting times – but is met by an impregnable defence.

Mr Miliband’s questions are not bad, but Mr Cameron’s retorts are better. The Prime Minister has a long training in this not very glorious kind of warfare: in September 1988, straight out of Oxford, he joined the Conservative Research Department, where much effort was devoted to digging out quotations which could be used to suggest that the Labour Party was mired in a set of absurd contradictions.

So when Mr Miliband said elected police commissioners are a waste of money, Mr Cameron hit him with a remark by Gordon Brown: “The Home Secretary will bring forward proposals for directly elected representatives to give local people more control over policing.”

Mr Brown said this in the Commons on 14 May 2008, but Mr Cameron cleverly implied that it had been in the Labour manifesto of May 2010, written by Mr Miliband, whom he proceeded to accuse of “a complete U-turn”.

When Mr Miliband switched to the NHS, Mr Cameron was once more ready and waiting with an inconvenient quotation, this time by John Healey, the shadow Health Secretary, who had apparently opined that “what Labour says matters less than what almost anyone else says”.

Mr Cameron’s professional technique is hidden by the swagger with which he plays his shots. The Prime Minister’s scorn for his opponent, and laughter at his own jokes, suggest a man without a care in the world. At one stage he committed the atrocious mistake of referring to “my housing minister”: the man is the Queen’s housing minister.

Confidence can easily degenerate into over-confidence, which is why Mr Cameron could one day get himself out by attempting a ludicrously risky shot. He is not averse to taking risks, as he showed in a reply to one of his backbenchers.

Nadine Dorries (C, Mid-Bedfordshire) complained that “the Liberal Democrats make up 8.7 per cent of this Parliament and yet they seem to be influencing our free school policy, health and many issues including immigration and abortion”, after which she issued a challenge: “Does the Prime Minister think it is about time he told the Deputy Prime who is the boss?”

Mr Cameron began, “I know the honourable lady is extremely frustrated,” whereupon he was interrupted by rude laughter in which he joined, after which he ended: “I’m going to give up on this one.”

The Prime Minister had not answered the question. Since it was an unanswerable question, or unanswerable without insulting Nick Clegg who was sitting next to him, perhaps that was the best way to leave it.

Tory backbenchers complain that Mr Cameron listens more to Mr Clegg than to them. Mark Reckless (C, Rochester and Strood) demanded that the Prime Minister “now listen to Conservative colleagues and take the opportunity to hold a referendum on Europe”.

Mr Cameron refused to do so. Perhaps it is his own side who will one day trip him up.

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."

Debt Crisis: Is The Great Reckoning Upon Us?

Gordon Brown: one of the chief architects.

In response to the crisis of 2008, UK policy-makers did five key things:

1. They bailed out a number of banks that had inadequate capital.
2. They insisted that banks that were not bailed out had to raise additional capital privately.
3. They raised spending, by around £110 billion (mainly by continuing with previously-scheduled large. spending rises even though the situation had changed).
4. They enacted a temporary tax cut (around £12.5 billion).
5. They printed money (around £200 billion).

Of these policies, the first three were serious errors. The last (money-printing) was done well, and was the key reason for the growth from mid-2009 to mid-2010. The temporary tax cut was in principle a good idea, though it would have been better to have cut income tax than VAT. And if we had not done the ill-conceived spending rises, we could have made the temporary tax cut at least three times (perhaps six times) as big. Extensive academic studies have demonstrated that temporary tax cuts provide much more effective stimulus than spending rises (indeed, since spending rises may be believed to be permanent – as they often are – they can make households and businesses believe that the medium-term growth outlook is worse (as it would be if the public spending stayed up) and thus actually damage growth even in the short term.

However, although raising spending was an error, much the worst error was bailing out the banks. As of 2008, the situations in the UK, Spain and Ireland were all fairly similar: each had had a serious housing bubble; each had banking sectors of above 400 per cent of GDP; none of them had particular high government debt; all had government deficits headed towards 10 per cent of GDP. There was no intrinsic way for us to know that Ireland would be very rapidly ruined by its decision to bail out the banks, whilst in Britain it would be more drawn out, and in Spain matters would be somewhere in between. Irish nominal GDP shrank by around 20 per cent in 2008/9. (The worst recession of the past century in Britain was that of the early 1920s, when nominal GDP shrank by around 28 per cent.)

Bailing out the banks meant that the governments of Britain, Ireland, Spain and elsewhere took onto the public balance sheet the liabilities of the banking sector. (I occasionally read articles suggesting that this is true in a metaphorical sense, because of the large deficits run. No. It is true in a literal sense. According to National Statistics, the liabilities of RBS and Lloyds are UK government liabilities.) This overstretch in the government balance sheet is a key reason the government needs to cut the deficit as quickly as it does – without the commitments to the banks, we would have been able to run larger deficits for longer (especially if those deficits were the result of temporary tax cuts).

I would have opposed bailing out the banks even if I had been certain it would “work” in its own terms. It is immoral to tax poor people to keep rich people rich, despite their bad investment choices, and it destroys the functioning of capitalism. But there was always the danger that – as in Ireland – they wouldn’t work in any sense, but would simply bankrupt the governments involved. The crisis of 2008/9 was not simply a liquidity crisis. It was not the result of market irrationality. It was not even simply a matter of insolvency arising from past losses. In a number of cases the business models of financial institutions were no longer going concerns – they were value-destroying enterprises, not value-creating ones. This was not simply a matter of gambles with fancy financial derivatives. Even before the bonds market madness of 2005-7, around 30 per cent of the gross income of European retail banking came from mortgages. But mortgage volumes remain way down on their mid-2000s levels, and even when they come back the value of transactions will be much lower. The only way a number of these business could continue without significant restructuring of the sort that would occur under administration is for governments to provide an ongoing stream of subsidies.

Recent developments in financial markets suggest that we may soon face a Great Reckoning for the policy errors of 2008/9. Some bank shares are now worth less than before nationalisation; the cost of insuring the debts of some banks has recently been higher than the 2008 peaks. Governments have been arrogant in assuming themselves capable of bailing out some of these monster banks, when they had made such bad losses. They have been deluded in assuming that significant structural change was not required in the banking sector. There is now a significant risk that, around Europe in particular, many state-owned banks will go bust, despite government backing. If it happens, this is likely to bring down governments – indeed, may even lead to constitutional overthrows in two or three countries. The consequence could be another recession as bad to twice as bad as that of 2008/9.

In countries such as Britain and Ireland and Spain, that ought to have been OK. Public debt – setting aside banking sector liabilities – is not at critical levels even now. We ought to be able to cut taxes temporarily, increase deficits, and see ourselves through in the normal way. Unfortunately, because of government over-commitments in the banking sector, we will struggle to maintain solvency even by cutting spending as aggressively as is politically deliverable.

A further phase of recession (indeed, even simply tepid growth) will necessitate further spending cuts. The UK political debate is still stuck in an absurd situation in which a supposedly-serious political party, egged on by quite a section of the press, still wants to pretend that the alternative to the Coalition’s programme would be to cut spending less and cut slower. The truth is that we are likely to have to cut spending more and faster. Indeed, there is a chance that we shall yet be forced to cut spending much faster – including on sacred cows like health – because a further phase of recession could well lead financial markets to lose confidence in our government’s bonds, as they have lost confidence in the bonds of other governments.

Much of this was avoidable. We did not need to bail out the banks, bankrupting multiple governments in the process. There were alternatives, such as imposing debt-equity swaps. We did not need to whack up spending, undermining long-term growth rates. We could have kept spending under control and instead cut taxes.

Four years after the financial crisis began, in the summer of 2007, we still send tens of billions more, every few months, to bail out the banks – though these days we have rebranded our banking sector bailouts “sovereign debt bailouts”. The patience of taxpayers with such nonsense is an affront to democracy – No. More than that: democracy has failed, and in a number of European states political upheaval may (justly) be part of a Great Reckoning.

Perhaps we shall muddle through, for a little while yet, with policy errors simply leading to hidden damage and injustice – as usual. But if, despite the trillions poured into them, large government-backed banks now go bust, dragging down their states’ solvency in the process, the bailouts of 2008/9 will go down as the greatest economic folly in history. And I shall be bitter and ungracious enough to say: I told you so.