Darling on the rocks?

Feb 20 2008 by Rob Merrick, Liverpool Daily Post

ALISTAIR DARLING is clearly on the Rocks after his bungling over that troublesome bank – but I doubt Gordon Brown is preparing to scuttle him.

The talk at Westminster is that the Chancellor is fatally wounded and the weakest occupant of No.11 Downing Street since Norman Lamont was brought low by Black Wednesday and the ERM debacle.

That last bit is true, but a closer examination of the momentous events of 1992-3 reveal other parallels in their positions – ones that point to Mr Darling’s survival, for all his troubles.

When Britain crashed out of the ERM, after interest rates were hiked to an eye-watering 15%, it made Mr Lamont a figure of loathing and ridicule. John Major sacked him seven months later.

Almost certainly he had no choice, but I think the clues to Mr Darling’s survival lie in Mr Lamont’s refusal to go quietly and its deadly impact on the Major premiership.

In an electrifying resignation speech, the ex-Chancellor plunged the knife into the former close friend who had sacked him, telling MPs: “We give the impression of being in office, but not in power.” Mr Major, too, was fatally wounded.

No one likes being sacked, but Mr Lamont was not prepared to be the fall guy because it was Mr Major – his predecessor as Chancellor – who had taken Britain into the ERM at a ludicrously inflated exchange rate, that murdered manufacturing.

Flash forward 15 years.

Who set up the Financial Services Authority which miserably failed to spot Northern Bank’s reckless business plan? One Gordon Brown.

And who vetoed nationalisation for months because of a fear of being attacked as “Old Labour”, thus guaranteeing Mr Darling would be condemned as a “ditherer”? The very same man next door.

Mr Brown also bounced his Chancellor into October’s back-of-the-envelope mini-Budget – leading to embarrassing U-turns on non-domiciles and Capital Gains Tax?

Will Mr Darling be the fall guy for all of that? I think not.

Since Sunday’s decision to nationalise Northern Rock, many have claimed it is Labour’s Black Wednesday – wrongly, because the breaking of the bank has not hit people’s pockets like 15% interest rates did.

But the lesson for Mr Brown will be that he and his Chancellor must hang together – or be hanged separately.

I HAVE mentioned before that, for all his affability, it is difficult for Chris Grayling to be the Tory “shadow minister for Liverpool” from his constituency in leafy Surrey.

Well, I fear this confession may not help him.

Mr Grayling said: “Although I don’t agree with Alex Ferg- uson’s politics, I’m a Man- chester United fan . . . ”

Good luck on your next visit, shadow minister!