The Rt Hon Alistair Darling
Alistair Darling
Prime Minister	Gordon Brown
Preceded by
Succeeded by
Nationality	British
Political party	Labour
Spouse	Margaret Vaughan
Residence	11 Downing Street
Alma mater	University of Aberdeen

Alistair Maclean Darling (born November 28, 1953) is a British politician and Chancellor of the Exchequer since June 28, 2007. He is Labour Party Member of Parliament for Edinburgh South West in Scotland.

Early Life

Darling was born in London, England,[1] the son of an engineer. He is the great nephew of Sir William Darling who was Conservative MP for Edinburgh South (1945–1957). He was educated at Kirkcaldy, and the exclusive Loretto School, Musselburgh, East Lothian (Scotland's oldest boarding school), and attended the University of Aberdeen where he was awarded a Bachelor of Laws (LL.B). He became a solicitor in 1978, then changed course for the Scots bar and was admitted as an advocate in 1984. He was elected as a councillor to the Falkirk District Council in 1982 and served until he was elected to parliament. He was also a board member for the Lothian and Borders Police. He was a governor of Napier College in 1985 for two years.

Member of Parliament

He entered Parliament at the 1987 General Election in Edinburgh Central defeating the sitting Conservative MP Sir Alexander Fletcher by 2,262 votes, and has remained an MP since.

After the creation of the Scottish Parliament the number of Scottish seats at Westminster was reduced, his Edinburgh Central seat was abolished and since 2005 he has represented the new seat of Edinburgh South West. The Labour Party was so concerned that Darling might be defeated in Edinburgh South West in the 2005 general election that several of the most senior of the party's leading members - including Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott and Chancellor Gordon Brown (Darling's political mentor) - made supportive visits to the constituency during the election campaign, and despite being a senior Cabinet minister himself during the campaign Darling was hardly seen outside the area, so hard was he working to win the seat. In the event, he won it comfortably, with a majority of 7,242 over the second-placed Conservative candidate, a 16.49% margin on a 65.4% turnout.

Shadow Cabinet

As a backbencher he sponsored the Solicitors (Scotland) Act 1988 [2]. He soon became an Opposition Home Affairs spokesman in 1988 on the frontbench of Neil Kinnock.

After the 1992 General Election he became a spokesman on Treasury Affairs until being promoted to Tony Blair's Shadow Cabinet as the Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury in 1996. Following the 1997 General Election he entered Cabinet as the Chief Secretary to the Treasury; he is one of only three people who have been in the Cabinet ever since (the others are Gordon Brown and Jack Straw).

In government

In 1998 he was made the Secretary of State for Social Security replacing Harriet Harman who had been dismissed. After the 2001 General Election, the department for Social Security was abolished and replaced with the new Department for Work and Pensions, which also took employment away from the education portfolio, Darling headed the new department until 2002 when he was transferred to the Department for Transport, in the wake of his predecessor Stephen Byers resigning after a great deal of criticism.

As Transport Secretary, Darling was given a brief to "take the department out of the headlines" and was widely considered to have achieved this, although he was also criticised for achieving too little else whilst he held the transport brief. He oversaw the creation of Network Rail, the successor to Railtrack, which had collapsed in controversial circumstances for which his predecessor was largely blamed. He also procured the passage of the legislation - the Railways and Transport Safety Act 2003 - which abolished the Rail Regulator and replaced it with the Office of Rail Regulation. He was responsible for the Railways Act 2005 which abolished the Strategic Rail Authority, a creation of the Labour government under the Transport Act 2000. Darling was also responsible for the cancellation of several major Light Rail schemes.

Although he was not at the Department for Transport at the time of the collapse of Railtrack, Darling vigorously defended what had been done in a speech to the House of Commons on October 24 2005. This included the making of threats to the independent Rail Regulator that if he intervened to defend the company against the government's attempts to force it into railway administration - a special status for insolvent railway companies - the government would introduce emergency legislation to take the regulator under direct political control. This stance by Darling surprised many observers because during his tenure at the Department for Transport he had made several statements to Parliament and the financial markets assuring them that the government regarded independence in economic regulation of the railways as essential.

After the Scottish Office was folded into the Department for Constitutional Affairs, he was made Scottish Secretary in combination with his transport portfolio in 2003. In the Cabinet reshuffle of May 2006, he was moved to the position of Secretary of State for Trade and Industry; Douglas Alexander replaced him as both Secretary of State for Transport and Secretary of State for Scotland. On 10 November 2006 in a mini-reshuffle, Malcolm Wicks, the Minister for Energy at the Department for Trade and Industry and therefore one of Darling's junior ministers, was appointed Minister for Science. Darling took over day-to-day control of the Energy portfolio.

Chancellor of the Exchequer

In June 2007, the new Prime Minister Gordon Brown appointed Darling Chancellor of the Exchequer, a promotion widely anticipated in the media. Journalists observed that three of Darling's four junior ministers at the Treasury (Angela Eagle, Jane Kennedy and Kitty Ussher) are female and dubbed his team, "Darling's Darlings".[3]

Political safe pair of hands

Darling is one of only three people who have been in the Cabinet continuously since Labour won the general election in 1997 (the other two being Gordon Brown and Jack Straw, now Secretary of State for Justice and Lord Chancellor). Darling is often described as a safe pair of hands politically, given jobs to take the heat out of troubled circumstances (such as the chaos at the Department for Transport under his predecessor Stephen Byers). But whilst his record has – until recently - been unmarked by disasters, it is also untainted by conspicuous policy successes. Critics say that his political longevity is principally attributable to his having avoided during his ministerial career making any decisions of significance – leaving no footprints in the snow.

His political closeness to Gordon Brown is also a major factor in his staying power within the Cabinet, and in his promotion to Chancellor of the Exchequer. But Darling could not expect the waters to stay calm once he was appointed to head the Treasury, especially since his predecessor as Chancellor is now the prime minister.

In September 2007, for the first time since 1860, there was a run on a British bank – Northern Rock. Although the Bank of England and the Financial Services Authority have jurisdiction in such cases, ultimate authority for deciding on financial support for a bank in exceptional circumstances rests with the Chancellor. Darling provided an unqualified taxpayers’ guarantee of the deposits of savers in Northern Rock, drawing very significant criticism from the City of London and others.

Prime minister Gordon Brown left the public handling of the crisis to Darling, emerging only when it appeared to be over. This was consistent with Brown's reputation of being absent when there is trouble – the so-called Macavity syndrome – and contrasted sharply with the prime minister's appearances during the London and Glasgow bombs, the foot and mouth crisis and the summer floods. On this occasion, Brown left it to Darling.

In the Daily Telegraph on September 21, 2007, business commentator Jeff Randall described Darling as Brown’s five-stringed marionette.

Personal Life

Darling has been married to Margaret McQueen Vaughan since 1986 and they have one son and one daughter.

In his book Servants of the People, about New Labour's first term of office (1997-2001), Andrew Rawnsley described Darling as a "managerial technocrat" of a type preferred by former Prime Minister Tony Blair. He was voted Britain's most boring politician two years running [4].

On September 10, 2007, Alistair's pet cat Sybil moved from Edinburgh with the family to 10 Downing Street, Sybil was located to the 3-bedroomed flat above No. 10. She was named after Sybil Fawlty from the 1970s sitcom Fawlty Towers, sharing a thespian name with her predecessor Humphrey, who was named after Sir Humphrey Appleby in the Yes Minister.

See also

• Cabinet of the United Kingdom

Bibliography

• Torrance, David, The Scottish Secretaries (Birlinn 2006)

External links

• 10 Downing Street — Alistair Darling official biography
• Cabinet Reshuffle News article
• Guardian Unlimited Politics — Ask Aristotle: Alistair Darling MP
• TheyWorkForYou.com — Alistair Darling MP
• BBC Profile of Alistair Darling from 2006
• BBC Profile of Alistair Darling from 2002

References

Parliament of the United Kingdom (1801–present)
Preceded by Alex Fletcher	Member of Parliament for Edinburgh Central 1987 – 2005	Succeeded by (constituency abolished)
Preceded by (new constituency)	Member of Parliament for Edinburgh South West 2005 – present	Incumbent
Political offices
Preceded by William Waldegrave	Chief Secretary to the Treasury 1997 – 1998	Succeeded by Stephen Byers
Preceded by Harriet Harman	Secretary of State for Social Security Later Sec. State Work and Pensions 1998 – 2002	Succeeded by Andrew Smith
Preceded by Stephen Byers Sec. State Transport, Local Government and the Regions	Secretary of State for Transport 2002 – 2006	Succeeded by Douglas Alexander
Preceded by Helen Liddell	Secretary of State for Scotland 2003 – 2006
Preceded by Alan Johnson	Secretary of State for Trade and Industry 2006-2007	Succeeded by John Hutton Sec. State Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform'''
Preceded by Gordon Brown	Chancellor of the Exchequer 2007 – present	Incumbent

•  • [ e] Chancellors of the Exchequer

: Giffard Stanton Catesby Berners Baker Mildmay Fortescue Home Caesar Greville Portland Newburgh Cottington Colepeper Clarendon Shaftesbury Duncombe Ernle Booth Hampden Montagu Smith Boyle : Smith Harley Benson Wyndham Onslow Walpole Stanhope Aislabie Pratt Walpole Sandys Pelham Lee Bilson Legge Lyttelton Bilson Legge Mansfield Bilson Legge Barrington Dashwood Grenville Dowdeswell Townshend North Cavendish Pitt Cavendish : Addington Pitt Petty Perceval Vansittart Robinson Canning Abbott Herries Goulburn Althorp Denman Peel Monteagle Baring Goulburn C Wood Disraeli Gladstone Lewis Disraeli Gladstone Disraeli Hunt Lowe Gladstone Northcote Gladstone Childers Hicks Beach Harcourt R Churchill Goschen Harcourt Hicks Beach Ritchie A Chamberlain Asquith Lloyd George McKenna Bonar Law A Chamberlain Horne Baldwin N Chamberlain Snowden W Churchill Snowden N Chamberlain Simon K Wood Anderson Dalton Cripps Gaitskell Butler Macmillan Thorneycroft Heathcoat-Amory Lloyd Maudling Callaghan Jenkins Macleod Barber Healey Howe Lawson Major Lamont Clarke Brown Darling

•  • [ e] Great Offices of State of the United Kingdom
Gordon Brown Prime Minister Alistair Darling Chancellor of the Exchequer David Miliband Foreign Secretary Jacqui Smith Home Secretary

•  • [ e] Brown Cabinet
Alexander

•  • [ e] G8 Finance Ministers
Jim Flaherty Christine Lagarde Peer Steinbrck Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa Fukushiro Nukaga Alexei Kudrin Alistair Darling Henry Paulson