Darling Declares War on Downing Street Bullying

Here's a transcript of Alisatir Darling's interview with Jeff Randall on Sky News. Delicious stuff. He confirms everything Andrew Rawnsley has alleged about how Number 10 treated him. So if Rawnsley was right about that, then it begs the question...

JEFF RANDALL:
Now that you have faced him down and in some respects called his bluff, has the Prime Minister stopped bullying you?

ALISTAIR DARLING:
Well I don’t quite see it that way. I’ve always said that at the end of the day it is up to the Prime Minister who he wants as his Chancellor. Now all of us can have our good days and our bad days and of course Gordon and I have some very robust exchanges, as you’ve just said. I can’t imagine any healthy relationship between a Prime Minister and a Chancellor where they don’t have differences of opinion from time to time. What unites us though is we’re both committed to the same end goal, of getting ourselves through this recession, getting through to recovery and helping this country do the best it possibly can so of course people have their ups and downs and all of us can be guilty from time to time of saying things or doing things that perhaps in the cold light of day we shouldn’t.

JEFF RANDALL:
I think we all understand robust dialogue and we would expect that but for instance, in the summer of 2008 when you gave that famous interview to a newspaper and you said this is going to be the worst recession for 60 years, weren’t you bullied by the Prime Minister to retract that? Didn’t he try to get you to go back and say it’s not going to be like that?

ALISTAIR DARLING:
No, I remember the conversation with him very well and I was a bit annoyed because the story had sort of spun away from what I originally said and both of us agreed that what had not been got across is that I had said we were certainly in for a very profound and deep recession …

JEFF RANDALL:
And you were right and he was wrong.

ALISTAIR DARLING:
Yes, but I also said that other countries would be there as well. But look, every relationship between politicians, especially between number Ten and Eleven, of course there are going to be differences from time to time but I always take this view, of course there’s been some bad days but actually there have been rather more good days than there have been bad days and I’d say the two of us, there’s more than unites us than will ever divide us I think.

JEFF RANDALL:
There are bad days and then there are dodgy days. After that famous interview the attack dogs were sent out against you, we all know who they are, Damien McBride, Charlie Wheelan and they had a right pop at you behind your back in the press. Are you saying that that wasn’t subtle bullying?

ALISTAIR DARLING:
Look, nobody likes that sort of briefing that goes on but I’ve been around long enough, you pick these things out very quickly and the one thing you learn about briefing is that at least one other person knows you’ve done it so it soon enough gets out but frankly …

JEFF RANDALL:
But you were being briefed against weren’t you? You admit that?

ALISTAIR DARLING:
Of course there were people saying things but frankly my best answer for them is the fact that I’m still here, one of them is not.

JEFF RANDALL:
Ain’t that the truth. Now just on a personal note really, that fruity comment attributed to the delightful Mrs Darling when she realised that you were being stitched up, true or false?

ALISTAIR DARLING:
Well I haven’t heard Margaret using that sort of language but when you go through a thing like that, I remember the weekend after we came back and I’d done this interview and the forces of hell were unleashed …

JEFF RANDALL:
By Number Ten?

ALISTAIR DARLING:
Not just them, the Tories as well. The Tories jumped on to the bandwagon as ever and they all tried to join in and of course it’s difficult, especially for the Chancellor. If you’re in politics you have to be thick skinned I think to an extent. Of course you are not immune from the fact that you wish people hadn’t said things or you hadn’t done things but frankly, when I look back at the three years I’ve been Chancellor, okay it was a weekend you could have done without but there was far more important things …

JEFF RANDALL:
But what a lot of people will not understand is this. Why would the Prime Minister and his henchmen brief against you, one, for telling the truth and two, for being right?

ALISTAIR DARLING:
I do not know why the briefers if you like did what they did, one day maybe they’ll explain. What I do know is that yes, unfortunately, and it’s not a great source of pleasure, what I said did turn out to be true as we well know but what is important is yes, you have your ups and downs, yes you have your differences of opinion and a lot of people had different views right at the start of the recession as to exactly what we were going into. The important thing is did we get it right in sorting it out, are we getting it right now and making sure we have got through to recovery and are we making it clear that there is a choice that faces people – but we are going to come on to that no doubt in the rest of the interview – as to which of the two major political parties have got a clear view of what will be in the future.