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Alistair Darling
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| The Right Honourable Alistair Darling MP |
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| Assumed office 28 June 2007 |
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| Prime Minister | Gordon Brown |
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| Preceded by | Gordon Brown |
| Succeeded by | Incumbent |
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| In office 5 May 2006 – 27 June 2007 |
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| Prime Minister | Tony Blair |
| Preceded by | Alan Johnson |
| Succeeded by | John Hutton |
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| In office 13 June 2003 – 5 May 2006 |
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| Prime Minister | Tony Blair |
| Preceded by | Helen Liddell |
| Succeeded by | Douglas Alexander |
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| In office 29 May 2002 – 5 May 2006 |
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| Prime Minister | Tony Blair |
| Preceded by | Stephen Byers |
| Succeeded by | Douglas Alexander |
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| In office 27 July 1998 – 29 May 2002 |
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| Prime Minister | Tony Blair |
| Preceded by | Harriet Harman (as Social Security) |
| Succeeded by | Andrew Smith |
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| In office 3 May 1997 – 27 July 1998 |
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| Prime Minister | Tony Blair |
| Preceded by | William Waldegrave |
| Succeeded by | Stephen Byers |
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| Incumbent | |
| Assumed office 11 June 1987 |
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| Preceded by | Alexander MacPherson Fletcher |
| Succeeded by | Incumbent |
| Majority | 7,242 (16.5%) |
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| Born | 28 November 1953 London, England |
| 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.
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Darling was born in London, England,[1] the son of a civil engineer, Thomas, and his wife, Anna. 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 private Loretto School, Musselburgh, East Lothian, then 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.
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. Since the 2005 election he has represented Edinburgh South West. The Labour Party was so concerned that Darling might be defeated, several senior party figures, including Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott and Chancellor Gordon Brown, made supportive visits to the constituency during the election campaign. Despite being a senior Cabinet minister himself, Darling was hardly seen outside the area, as he was making the maximum effort to win his 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.
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 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.
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".[1]
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. The 2007 subprime mortgage financial crisis had caused a liquidity crisis in the UK banking industry, and Northern Rock was unable to borrow as required by its business model. Darling authorised the Bank of England to lend Northern Rock funds to cover its liabilities and provided an unqualified taxpayers’ guarantee of the deposits of savers in Northern Rock in an attempt to stop the run. Northern Rock borrowed up to £20 billion from the Bank of England[3], and Darling was criticized for becoming sucked into a position where so much public money was tied up in a private company.[4]
Darling was Chancellor when the personal and confidential details of over 25 million British citizens went missing while being sent from his department to the National Audit Office. A former Scotland Yard detective stated that with the current rate of £2.50 per person's details this data could have been sold for £60 million.[2] The acting leader of the Liberal Democrats, Vince Cable, put the value at £1.5bn, or £60 per identity.[3]
Darling has been married to Margaret McQueen Vaughan (a former journalist on the former newspaper Sunday Standard) since 1986 and they have one son (Calum, born 1988, and reading law at the University of Aberdeen) and one daughter (Anna, born c.1991). He had a previous marriage in the 1970s.
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 [5].
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.
He enjoys listening to Pink Floyd, Coldplay and Leonard Cohen.[citation needed] His home life is very important to him. He lives in the Morningside area of Edinburgh, in the same street as JK Rowling.
- Torrance, David, The Scottish Secretaries (Birlinn 2006)
- ^ http://politics.guardian.co.uk/person/biography/0,,-1271,00.html
- ^ http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts1988/Ukpga_19880042_en_1.htm
- ^ US private equity firm eyes Rock
- ^ Northern Rock & Virgin: who wins?
- ^ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/01/05/nbul05.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/01/05/ixhome.html#2
- 10 Downing Street — Alistair Darling official biography
- Cabinet Reshuffle News article
- Guardian Unlimited Politics — Ask Aristotle: Alistair Darling MP
- TheyWorkForYou.com — Alistair Darling MP
- Times profile - June 2007
- BBC Profile of Alistair Darling from 2006
- BBC Profile of Alistair Darling from 2002
- BBC Politics page
| Parliament of the United Kingdom | ||
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| 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 |
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| 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 |
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| Alexander | Ashton | Balls | Benn | Blears | Brown | Browne | Burnham | Darling | Denham | Hain | Harman | Hoon | Hutton | Johnson | Kelly | D. Miliband | E. Miliband | Purnell | J. Smith | Straw | Woodward In attendance: Austin | Cooper | Grocott | Hughes | Jowell | Malloch-Brown | Scotland | A. Smith |
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Categories: Articles needing additional references from November 2007 | Articles that may contain original research since November 2007 | All articles with unsourced statements | Articles with unsourced statements since November 2007 | British Secretaries of State | Labour MPs (UK) | UK MPs 1987-1992 | UK MPs 1992-1997 | UK MPs 1997-2001 | UK MPs 2001-2005 | UK MPs 2005- | Members of the United Kingdom Parliament for Scottish constituencies | Members of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom | Chancellors of the Exchequer of the United Kingdom | Councillors in Scotland | Scottish lawyers | Alumni of the University of Aberdeen | Old Lorettonians | People associated with Napier University | People from London | Anglo-Scots | 1953 births | Living people