Darling Bashes Balls and Brown
Guido has often thought that history will be a lot kinder to Alastair Darling than anyone else who survived serving in the last government. Knowing exactly how to pick his moments, we have seen glimpses of the truth from Darling, especially with his “forces of hell” comments. Well his memoirs are going to be bad news for Brown and Balls and their attempts to rewrite history. Labour Uncut have seen extracts:
“Darling details the total breakdown in trust between the prime minister and chancellor. He singles out Ed Balls and Shriti Vadhera as key Brown lieutenants running what amounted to a shadow treasury operation within government. Brown’s demeanour was increasingly “brutal and volcanic”, mistrusting Darling to the extent that he repeatedly tried to place his own aides in the treasury ministerial team to report back on what the chancellor was doing.
Darling point-blank refused to have the newly-enobled Shriti Vadhera in his team, describing her as “only happy if there was blood on the floor – preferably that of her colleagues”. He accepted Yvette Cooper as chief secretary to the treasury in January 2008, but was equally clear that the main reason Brown had placed her there was to “keep an eye” on him.”
Darling also apparently confirms for the first time that Brown tried to sack him in 2009 and replace him with Ed Balls. Something that the latter has point-blank denied in the past. There’s a pattern emerging here, and it’s going to be tricky for Balls to deny it all this time…
Darling’s revenge: Memoir to reveal rifts with “brutal and volcanic” Gordon Brown and “stubborn and exasperating” Mervyn King
by Atul Hatwal
Uncut can exclusively disclose explosive revelations in Alastair Darling’s upcoming memoir. The former chancellor lays bare the tensions at the top of government and the bank of England in the months leading up to and following the financial crash.
Darling details the total breakdown in trust between the prime minister and chancellor. He singles out Ed Balls and Shriti Vadhera as key Brown lieutenants running what amounted to a shadow treasury operation within government.
Brown’s demeanour was increasingly “brutal and volcanic”, mistrusting Darling to the extent that he repeatedly tried to place his own aides in the treasury ministerial team to report back on what the chancellor was doing.
Darling point-blank refused to have the newly-enobled Shriti Vadhera in his team, describing her as “only happy if there was blood on the floor – preferably that of her colleagues”.
He accepted Yvette Cooper as chief secretary to the treasury in January 2008, but was equally clear that the main reason Brown had placed her there was to “keep an eye” on him.
And, for the first time, Darling confirms his widely rumoured confrontation with the prime minister in 2009 when Brown tried to sack him as chancellor and offer him another role in cabinet.
Darling refused, making clear he would rather walk out of government than do any other job.
Gordon Brown’s capitulation in the face of this ultimatum was vindication for Darling, who had calculated that the prime minister was too weak to lose his chancellor.
But Darling doesn’t just reserve his fire for Gordon Brown.
He is similarly scathing about the governor of the bank of England, Mervyn King, who is lambasted as “amazingly stubborn and exasperating”.
The former chancellor confirms how close the government came to not renewing King for a second term in 2008 – the first time a governor would have been sacked after just one term in nearly fifty years – before they ultimately opted for renewal when they couldn’t find a suitable alternative.
And in a move that echoes Conservative criticisms of the regulatory structure put in place by Gordon Brown in 1997, Darling zeroes in on the “prickly and strained” relations between King and Adair Turner, chair of the financial services authority, as a reason that regulators failed to prevent the crash.
Although Darling is clear that no one could have predicted the scale of what happened, his account will be deeply uncomfortable reading for a former prime minister trying to rehabilitate himself politically and a governor of the bank of England attempting to claw back some credibility.
Atul Hatwal is associate editor of Labour Uncut.
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