Who’d be Alistair Darling? Once viewed as the safest pair of hands in the government, he has presided over a period of crisis in the Treasury not witnessed since the time of Norman Lamont (and a young adviser called David Cameron) more than a decade and a half ago. Most cabinet ministers consider themselves unfortunate in having to deal with a single serious crisis in their time, two at the most. Darling has faced an avalanche: Northern Rock, the loss of computer discs containing details of 25 million people, criticism of his handling of a new tax on “non-doms”, and changes to capital gains tax and corporation tax. He has had to weather the storm over the decision to abolish the 10p rate of income tax inherited from his predecessor, deal with a potentially disastrous downturn in the housing market and the effects of continued hikes in the price of oil.
When we meet on a glorious June day at the Treasury, the Chancellor is in a remarkably sunny frame of mind, all things considered. I wonder if, just sometimes, he felt he was the most unlucky politician alive. “If you’re ever tempted to feel sorry for yourself, then that’s the day you go away,” he replies. “You just have to deal with events.” He raises the example of the child benefit discs, lost in November 2007. “When I was phoned up on a Saturday morning and told by the head of Revenue & Customs that they’d lost these tax discs . . . it was obvious to me within 30 seconds that this was a massive political problem and you just have to deal with it. No one would want to go to the House of Commons and explain it the way I had to, but there’s no way to get away from it.”
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