Alistair Darling put country before party – and saved the Union

St Andrew’s Day 2023 has brought with it the sad news of the death of one of our nation’s finest patriots. Alistair Darling’s death at the far too young age of 70 feels like a passing of an era. Not just a political era, but one of courage, principle, courtesy and, above all, of patriotism untainted by the stain of partisanship.

He was a politician of an unusual type: he considered his long tenure as Tony Blair’s transport secretary a success, not because of the positive headlines he secured for himself, but because he had succeeded in his stated aim of keeping his department below the media’s radar. Brought into the department in the aftermath of a series of catastrophic rail accidents, he was the perfect person to bring a much-needed atmosphere of calm and stability to an industry uncertain of its future.

As Gordon Brown’s chancellor, he oozed reassurance at the most crucial of times for the country, during the 2008 international financial crash. Having been a long-term ally of the then prime minister, he was trusted by Labour MPs to stand up to Brown when necessary, and it was his reputation in the Parliamentary Labour Party that allowed him successfully to resist moves, in 2009, to replace him with Ed Balls, the prime minister’s protégé.

Darling unexpectedly took centre stage again, even after he and his party had been removed from office by the voters in 2010, when the Scottish independence referendum campaign was launched, and he was persuaded to take on the chairmanship of the ultimately successful cross-party Better Together campaign. He was perfect for the task. Middle ground Scots, including those who had yet to make up their minds about Scotland’s future in the UK, regarded him as a sober, reassuring figure who, more than almost any politician of his generation, could be trusted. When Darling warned of the dire economic consequences of separatism, people took notice.

It was a role that earned him great enmity from many of those nationalist politicians who today will no doubt be rushing to the TV studios to pay him tribute. But Darling saw the fight for the Union and the UK as more than a mere party political quarrel. The presentation of a united front by all the political parties involved in Better Together – Labour, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats – was to him not a cynical manoeuvre: it was utterly essential to the success of the project.

While nationalists scorned the former chancellor and his party for being willing to work with the hated Tories, Alistair recognised the value of demonstrating that, if Scotland’s place in the UK was to be preserved, it could not be done by any one party alone. While other politicians talk of putting country before party, Alistair Darling demonstrated the principle with vigour, honesty and passion.

It says a great deal about the man that across the disparate parties and interests of Better Together, there was virtually unanimous support for Darling’s appointment as chair. To his efforts can be attributed the defeat of the nationalist project (if not the nationalists themselves) and the continuation of the world’s most successful political, economic and social Union.

He started his political career in Edinburgh as a member of the then Lothian Regional Council, a bearded, and somewhat fearsome, Left-wing orator, far removed from the gentle, softly-spoken and infinitely moderate individual who became a cornerstone of the Labour administrations of Blair and Brown. He took the gentle ribbing occasionally meted out by his younger parliamentary colleagues over his revolutionary younger days with an attractive self-deprecating humour.

His sad death brings to a close a long career in which he proved himself a quietly radical but, above all, competent administrator. And the preservation of the United Kingdom itself is a legacy that no other politician can claim.

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