Obituary
70 – this one’s a shock. I found him to be one of the few honourable people in British public life in the last 20 years.
Alistair Darling
by 11 Comments
Comments
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Musings on the byways of popular culture
During my working years, I had peripheral contact with the Treasury in 2008 while the financial crisis was underway. I was impressed by the way that he and his officials dealt with that. Contrast with the shambles that was the covid response under the current rabble.
True, came over as a decent sort who still had some understanding of what public service meant. Makes him a giant compared to now.
In the 70s Edinburgh was looking at Glasgow’s roadbuilding with some envy, and the idea was floated to have a motorway go through the middle of the city, like the M8 goes through Glasgow.
One vocal councillor utterly hated the idea and fought it tooth and nail till the idea was safely killed. This was a young Alistair Darling.
He was like the sensible empathetic add-on to Gordon Brown, who immediately started undermining him of course.
Have to admire the nerve of someone taking on the job of chancellor under GB knowing full well what he was like.
There have been worse and more disastrous PM/COE relationships (hello Major and Lamont)
Re: “there have been worse and more disastrous PM/COE relationships”
Oh yes, indeed. The following six come to mind:
Johnson/Javid
Johnson/Sunak
Johnson/Zahawi
Truss/Kwarteng
Truss/Hunt
Sunak/Hunt
Don’t say the last one out loud.
“Oh good, I’m tired of waiting”
Seemed to be a fairly decent politician. A rare breed
Sure he went round the Top Gear test track in a Suzuki Liana and got snapped by a Speed Camera in a “hilarious” out take.
Wonder if he had to endure several years of Blackadder Goes Forth back-references
“Hello Darling”
Just saw a clip of him from the early 80s, speaking at I think a Labour Party Conference.
It has to be said, didn’t look like the sort of feller that would have to do without.