In life as well as in politics, Alistair Darling was a canny Scot.
At a dinner with Sky News journalists when he was chancellor, I told him I’d just bought a new car.
“Never buy a new car,” he told me. “They depreciate in value immediately. Buy one that’s a few months old.”
Politics – latest: Jeremy Hunt hails ‘one of the great chancellors’
Sky News Monday to Thursday at 7pm. Watch live on Sky channel 501, Freeview 233, Virgin 602, the Sky News website and app or YouTube.
Sound advice, no doubt. But it demonstrated how the nation’s finances were in good hands.
Like many leading politicians of the Blair-Brown years, Alistair Darling started on the left.
Blair used to talk about cabinet ministers like Darling, Alan Milburn and Stephen Byers having “made the journey” from the left. He would also lament that Jeremy Corbyn “never made the journey”.
Rishi Sunak and Sir Keir Starmer head to COP28 in Dubai
Women in 30s on average £4,000 a year worse off since 2010, figures show
The autumn statement shows how differently Labour and the Tories will tackle the next election
Darling was educated at the elite Loretto public school in Edinburgh – Blair went to Fettes, known as Scotland’s Eton – and was the great nephew of a Conservative MP.
In the late 1970s, Darling was a strong critic of James Callaghan’s Lib-Lab pact. The veteran left-winger George Galloway claims he flirted with the International Marxist group.
In the early 1980s, as a member of Lothian Regional Council, he defied Margaret Thatcher’s rate-capping laws.
And when he was trying to get elected to parliament, he was known as a “bearded Trot”. And Neil Kinnock was said to have referred to him as “that Trot Darling”.
Read more:
Alistair Darling dies aged 70
Gordon Brown on his former chancellor
But once elected to parliament, in 1987, he did indeed make the journey from bearded left-winger to a key member of the Blair-Brown inner circle. He even got rid of the beard.
He held no fewer than six cabinet posts: Treasury chief secretary, trade and industry, Scotland, transport, work and pensions and chancellor.
In his generous tribute, Blair said he could be given any position in the cabinet and be depended upon to do a good job.
What’s also remarkable about all the tributes is not just their warmth but the fact that they have come from so many political foes, including former Tory prime ministers John Major, David Cameron, Theresa May and Boris Johnson, and the SNP’s Nicola Sturgeon.
That’s significant, because Darling was a major figure in the Better Together campaign against Scottish independence in 2014. If only he’d had a big role in the 2016 Brexit referendum, the outcome might have been different.
While Tony Blair rated him highly, he was always seen as Gordon Brown’s man, since he was his number two at the Treasury in the early Blair years and then chancellor when Brown moved from Number 11 Downing Street to Number 10 in 2007.
As chancellor, he and his gregarious wife Maggie lived in Number 11. She’s a former journalist on Scotland’s Daily Record and The Herald – and would often chat with political correspondents like me in the street.
Back then, when the chancellor walked up Downing Street the photographers would shout – childishly – “Hello Darling”. The serious Mr Darling must have found it irritating.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
But while he was seen as reserved, softly spoken and rather serious in public, Maggie was the kind of extrovert you’d expect of a newspaper columnist.
It’s also worth saying that Alistair Darling was well served by his shrewd and affable special adviser Catherine Macleod, a friend of Maggie’s and a former political editor of The Herald, formerly the Glasgow Herald.
But while he was previously Brown’s man, as chancellor he became very much his own man and during the 2008 financial crash relations became so strained that Darling spectacularly, and uncharacteristically, let his frustration boil over on Sky News.
In an interview in August 2008 with Sky’s then business presenter Jeff Randall, Darling revealed a bitter feud with Brown, claiming he was undermined by Number 10 after warning the world faced the worst downturn in 60 years.
Read more:
Darling to stand down as MP
Darling warns of economic hit from Brexit
Darling: The Man Who Says Better Together
Asked by Randall about Downing Street’s reaction to a Guardian interview in which he said the world was facing “arguably the worst” economic downturn in 60 years, he replied: “I remember the weekend after we came back, and I’d done this interview and the forces of hell were unleashed.”
He also agreed with Randall’s assertion that two key Brown allies – former spin doctors Damian McBride and Charlie Whelan – had led the briefings against him. I remember it well. I was the political correspondent on duty that evening.
One of Brown’s favourite jokes – which he has told countless times – was that there are two types of chancellor, those who fail and those who get out just in time.
Darling was neither. He stayed on to tackle the financial crisis and was widely praised for his calm handling of the recession he had correctly predicted. History will show that he was indeed a canny chancellor.
Click to subscribe to the Sky News Daily wherever you get your podcasts
His death at just 70 is a big shock. Westminster has been stunned by the news.
And I shall probably never buy a brand-new car again.
