Interpreting | 2010.03.03
Neighbours from hell | Larry Elliott
Despite the souring of their relationship, both Brown and Darling know who the real enemy is
We can all think of candidates for the smallest book in history. There\'s How to Pull, by Nick Clegg. There\'s A Down and Out in Notting Hill and Oxford, by David Cameron. And there\'s My Mistakes, by Gordon Brown, probably the slimmest volume of the lot. The prime minister is not a man who admits easily to getting it wrong.
But if he could turn the clock back, Brown would confess to one or two regrets. Such as letting his attack dogs loose on Alistair Darling in August 2008, when the chancellor told Decca Aitkenhead of this paper that the world was facing its most serious financial crisis in 60 years. That, as it turned out, was a remarkably perceptive analysis. Within a month, the collapse of the US investment bank Lehman Brothers provided the catalyst for economic collapse of a sort not seen since the 30s\' depression.
It was, however, not the message that No 10 wanted, and so Darling had his reputation trashed by Brown\'s team. The PM strongly denied this in Commons exchanges today, but the best gloss that can be put on this is that Brown has had an uncharacteristic memory loss. At the time, Darling was alleged to have committed an unpardonable gaffe, and Brown\'s dim view of it and his chancellor was disseminated across Whitehall and Fleet Street.
Andrew Rawnsley\'s book brought this episode back into the spotlight, and it was given fresh legs when Darling told Jeff Randall on Sky News that Downing Street had unleashed "the forces of hell" on him following his recession warning 18 months ago. Ears pricked up. Darling, normally fastidious in his choice of language, does not casually use phrases like "forces of hell", so one interpretation of his interview was that the first and second lords of the Treasury were at war over what Labour should put in next month\'s pre-election budget.
If this were true, it would be bad news for Labour\'s hopes of clinging on to power. Governments where the PM and the chancellor are at odds over economic policy – think Margaret Thatcher and Nigel Lawson over the pound shadowing the German mark in the late 1980s – tend to be unstable.
That, though, is not the case this time. Darling blurted out his "forces of hell" comment because he is still sore about the way the Brown camp treated him, not just in the summer of 2008 but again in June last year, when the PM wanted to move his ally Ed Balls into the Treasury. It\'s personal, not political.
Darling had been close to Brown, both privately and politically, in the years before he became chancellor. He took a lot of the flak during the early stages of the financial crisis, when an economy built on excessive personal debt slid towards recession. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, he was then both shocked and angry to find himself on the receiving end of a No 10 hatchet job. And it does not take much, as Randall found, to bring that hurt to the surface.
Cameron had a fine old time at Prime Minister\'s Questions, forcing Brown to deny, altogether unconvincingly, that he had instructed his aides to spread poison about his chancellor. The Tories believe they can drive a wedge between 10 and 11 Downing Street during the budget preparations of the next few weeks.
Darling\'s team insist this is not going to happen, and that is true. Labour has had by far the better of the pre-election skirmishes in the first two months of 2010, and the government is gearing up for polling day. Despite the souring of their relationship, both Darling and Brown know who the real enemy is.
What\'s more, the policy differences between chancellor and PM are small. In recent weeks, both have sketched out the same strategy – growth to lift the still moribund economy out of recession, followed, when recovery is embedded, by a determined attempt to reduce the deficit in the next parliament.
This is a sound approach. It has received the backing of the International Monetary Fund and, if the recent opinion polls are right, it is helping Labour to narrow the poll gap. Brown might prefer a stronger emphasis on growth rather than deficit reduction (and there is a case for that), but he has been weakened by resignations, coup attempts and the election that never was. He can no longer press the point in the way that he could in his first few months as PM.
Darling, on the other hand, has survived the poisonous briefings and the attempts to sack him. He has been proved right over the economy. Should Gordon Brown be foolish enough to meddle with the budget, he will be told to get lost.
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/[...]n-darling-neighbours-from-hell
