More extracts from Alistair Darling’s memoir, due out next Wednesday, have leaked onto Labour Uncut, and today we get his view of Fred Goodwin and co. “My worry,” writes Darling, “was that they (the bankers) were so arrogant and stupid that they might bring us all down”.
The former chancellor reportedly lambasts Goodwin’s response to the crisis as that of someone “off to play a game of golf”, concluding that the former RBS boss “deserved to be a pariah”. Elsewhere, Darling describes Andy Hornby, the former chief executive of HBOS, as “looking like he was about to explode” when confronted with the full scale of what had happened on his watch. According to Labour Uncut’s Atul Hatwal, the former chancellor will also attack a lack of gratitude for the bailout that was “as shocking as it was stupid”.
What makes Darling’s intervention politically notable is that it comes so soon before the publication of the Vickers report on banking. As the Lib Dems fight for the introduction of a strict ring-fence between banks’ retail and investment arms, Darling’s attack on the avarice of the City won’t do their cause any harm.
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