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Darling ‘faced forces of hell’ from his own party
Chancellor recalls reaction to his warning that Britain faced worst recession for 60 years
Chancellor Alistair Darling has told Sky TV that not only the Conservative opposition but Number Ten itself unleashed "the forces of hell" on him after he said in a 2008 newspaper interview that Britain faced its worst recession for 60 years. But he denied having being bullied by the Prime Minister. There had been "robust exchanges" but these were part of a "healthy relationship", he said.
Last night, the Conservatives jumped on Darling's suggestion that Number 10 had undermined the Chancellor. "The idea that Gordon Brown runs a happy and united team has been blown apart tonight," said a Tory spokesman. "This is amazing public confirmation from the Prime Minister's own Chancellor that he ordered his henchmen to brief against him."
The interview in which Darling said Britain was facing "arguably the worst" economic downturn in 60 years was published in the Guardian in August 2008 after the paper's Decca Aitkenhead travelled to see Darling at his holiday home on the Isle of Lewis in the Hebrides.
On Darling's return to Downing Street the following weekend, he told Sky's Jeff Randall, "the forces of hell were unleashed."
Asked by Randall whether this was by Number 10, Darling responded: "Not just them, the Tories as well. It was a weekend you could have done without.
"I do not know why the briefers did what they did. One day maybe they will explain.
"What I do know is, unfortunately - and it's not a great source of pleasure - but what I said did turn out to be true."
Randall suggested that two key Brown allies at the time Damian McBride and Charlie Whelan - might have been the culprits. Darling refused to name names, but in a clear reference to McBride, who was forced to resign last year over a smear campaign against senior Conservatives, he said: "Frankly, my best answer for them is, I'm still here, one of them is not."
Darling's comments are the first from Downing Street - albeit Number 11 rather than Number 10 - to support any of the claims made by the Observer's political commentator Andrew Rawnsley in his controversial new book, The End of the Party.
While Number 10 has been working hard to refute Rawnsley's allegations that Brown bullies his staff, Darling's comments on Sky are seen to support another Rawnsley claim - namely that McBride resorted to "spreading poison" about Darling following the 2008 Guardian article.
In The End of the Party, Rawnsley quotes Darling's wife, Maggie, herself a former journalist, as saying: "The fucking cunts are trying to stitch up Alistair!"
Darling said last night that he could not remember his wife using such language. ·
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Aha Jess D: an attempt to engage with intelligence on the debate. But only an attempt. I am not willing to grant you the respect of success unless you will make one thing quite clear. What do you mean by 'socialism', if anything? I can define it, quite clearly and concisely, that is why I am so good at opposing it. Would you care to give your definition, if you can? Most socialistas are so woolly-minded that they only perform a series of endless dodges when the Hitlerian 'National Socialist German Workers Party' is pointed at - then they say 'that is not what I mean by socialism' - but they don't stay to say what is really is. Same with the horror that was Stalin's 'Union of Soviet Socialist Republics', a 70-year train wreck of model socialism, exported to China and and Cuba, and they are both embracing the free market capitalism as rapidly as they can. Give your definition if you can, then I will give mine. Prove you have idea one in your head, then it will get really interesting.
Did someone mention a socialist party? Gosh! Where and when was that then. As for Thatcher saying things'll get worse before they get better, when are they going to get better then? It's the Thatcher/Reagan legacy that's got us here.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer who was foolish enough to briefly tell the truth? Will anyone be grateful? Don't be silly. Especially not his own socialist party who ran up the bills and taxes in the first place. The last politician in Britain to gain big time by telling the unvarnished truth was Margaret Thatcher - she told the country that 'it would get worse before it got better' - we had to take our medicine in the 1980s. And people believed her, and it did get worse before it got better. But the legacy of socialist tax-and-spendthrift in the 1970s that she inherited from Wilson, Callaghan, and Healey had driven us, cap-in-hand, to the IMF for national hand out. But does anyone want to look at the facts squarely, that the normal pattern for British bankruptcy is being repeated now? Not on Darling's side they don't.