Even earlier than Northern Rock collapsed and the monetary disaster exploded, Alistair Darling was already wrangling with an unenviable inheritance as chancellor of the exchequer.

Not solely was he having to comply with within the footsteps of the longest-serving chancellor of contemporary occasions – a person who presided over an nearly unprecedentedly lengthy interval of stability and rising prosperity – he was doing so below the shadow of that very same man.

After years of ready, in June 2007 Gordon Brown had lastly taken over as prime minister, and he had little intention of permitting anybody else to meddle with the financial plans he had specified by his time on the Treasury.

Most officers would have crumpled within the face of this job, however Darling was a consummate politician – a clean, unshowy operator who not often ruffled feathers, regardless of having led among the most difficult departments in Whitehall.

He had been work and pensions secretary, transport secretary and commerce secretary too.

Competent and succesful, he was additionally, crucially, much less cursed with ego than most of his counterparts.

And when he acquired the job it appeared fairly possible that he would spend most of his time being overshadowed by the prime minister, however then, a few months in, Britain’s mortgage securitisation market froze.

Within a number of weeks, Northern Rock was in huge bother.

By September, the excessive avenue lender was successfully completed, searching for emergency help from the Bank of England and triggering the primary financial institution run since Victorian occasions.

Darling’s time in workplace can be outlined by the monetary disaster, by the collapse not simply of Northern Rock however of different British banking icons, by the nationalisation of RBS and, extra importantly nonetheless, the deep recession that adopted.

This was a world monetary disaster, however Britain, with its world banking system and robust dependence on the sector, was worse hit than most international locations.

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The hunch was deep and so too was the impression on Britain’s public funds.

Moreover, having managed and steered this method for greater than a decade up till just lately, there was no mistaking which politician was most liable for Britain’s half within the malaise: the brand new PM.

Yet for many of his time in workplace Darling maintained his composure and tried to scrub up the mess with out briefing about his predecessor’s half in it.

A scarred relationship with Gordon Brown

Tellingly, the second that almost all scarred his relationship with Gordon Brown got here when Darling warned that Britain was going through “the worst downturn in 60 years”.

While Darling recommended that disaster can be “more profound and long-lasting than people thought”, Brown believed (or needed to consider) that it will all be over in six months.

There have been livid briefings from “Gordon’s attack dogs”, as Darling later put it, suggesting that the chancellor had misplaced the plot. It was, Darling mentioned, just like the “forces of hell” had been deployed in opposition to him.

“I won’t deny,” he wrote in his memoirs some years later, “that this episode was deeply hurtful and that it shaped a difficult relationship for the rest of our term in office”.

The gentlemanly path

It was a telling second in different respects. For it underlined what mattered most to Darling.

While Brown was determined to keep away from having to internalise or publicise the dangerous news going through the nation, Darling was compelled to be sincere.

While Brown would normally use his press officers to temporary in opposition to his opponents, Darling most well-liked to take the gentlemanly path.

But the rift that grew between No 10 and No 11 would in different respects show a blessing to Alistair Darling. In the next years he grew in stature and independence.

No-one recommended within the months that ensued, as he carried out the tax cuts after which rises within the face of recession, that he wasn’t his personal man.

And whereas it’s onerous to take a lot that’s constructive from this era in British historical past, it will arguably have been very completely different (and probably far worse) had it not been for Alistair Darling.

Perhaps probably the most vital second got here when he resisted the stress (together with aggressive telephone calls from the US Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson) for Barclays to take over Lehman Brothers because the American funding financial institution careered in direction of collapse.

How completely different Britain’s destiny would have been had it absorbed Lehman’s poisonous waste and devices onto its steadiness sheet.

An elder statesman

After leaving workplace, Darling did a lot as he had whereas in workplace.

He tried to be the statesman. He led the Better Together marketing campaign throughout the Scottish independence referendum.

He sat within the House of Lords till 2020. He didn’t shout from the facet traces however in a short time grew to become an elder statesman, revered and admired throughout political divides.

Perhaps his best legacy is one thing else, one thing fairly intangible.

It is difficult to consider many politicians who can be remembered with such affection – as a very good man, a form man.

His loss, a lot sooner than anticipated, leaves British politics a sadder, considerably much less dignified place.