Alistair Darling

He was the great-nephew of Sir William Darling, a Conservative/Unionist Member of Parliament for Edinburgh South (1945–1957) who had served as Lord Provost of Edinburgh during the Second World War.

He was educated at Chinthurst School, in Tadworth, Surrey, then in Kirkcaldy, and at the private Loretto School, in Musselburgh.

He attended the University of Aberdeen, from where he graduated as a Bachelor of Laws (LLB).

He became the president of Aberdeen University Students' Representative Council.

Alistair MacLean Darling, Baron Darling of Roulanish, (28 November 1953 – 30 November 2023) was a British politician who served as Chancellor of the Exchequer under Prime Minister Gordon Brown from 2007 to 2010.

Alistair Darling was born on 28 November 1953 in Hendon, then part of Middlesex (now London), the son of a civil engineer, Thomas, and his wife, Anna MacLean.

Darling joined the Labour Party aged 23, in 1977.

He became a solicitor in 1978, then changed course for the Scots bar and was admitted as an advocate in 1984.

In 1982 he was elected to the Lothian Regional Council, where he supported large rates rises in defiance of Margaret Thatcher's rate-capping laws, and even threatened not to set a rate at all.

He served on the council until he was elected to the House of Commons.

A member of the Labour Party, he was a member of Parliament (MP) from 1987 to 2015, representing Edinburgh Central and Edinburgh South West.

Darling first entered Parliament at the 1987 general election in Edinburgh Central, defeating the incumbent Conservative MP, Sir Alexander Fletcher, by 2,262 votes; and remained an Edinburgh MP for 28 years until he stood down in 2015.

Following the creation of the devolved Scottish Parliament, the number of Scottish seats at Westminster was reduced, and the Edinburgh Central constituency he represented was abolished, to be split between constituencies centred on peripheral areas of the city.

The Labour Government offered a peerage to Lynda Clark, the Advocate General for Scotland, so that Darling could contest the new Edinburgh South West constituency, the main successor to Clark's Edinburgh Pentlands constituency.

As a backbencher he sponsored the Solicitors (Scotland) Act 1988.

He soon became an Opposition Home Affairs spokesman in 1988 on the front bench of Neil Kinnock.

Following the 1992 general election, he became a spokesman on Treasury Affairs, but was promoted to Tony Blair's Shadow Cabinet as the Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury in 1996.

Darling was first appointed Chief Secretary to the Treasury by Prime Minister Tony Blair in 1997, and was promoted to Secretary of State for Work and Pensions in 1998.

Following the 1997 general election, he entered Cabinet as the Chief Secretary to the Treasury.

In 1998, he was appointed Secretary of State for Social Security, replacing Harriet Harman who had been dismissed.

Following the 2001 general election, the Department of Social Security was abolished and replaced by the new Department for Work and Pensions, which also took employment away from the education portfolio.

Darling fronted the new department until 2002 when he was moved to the Department for Transport, after his predecessor Stephen Byers resigned.

Darling was given a brief to "take the department out of the headlines".

He oversaw the creation of Network Rail, the successor to Railtrack, which had collapsed in controversial circumstances for which his predecessor was largely blamed.

After spending four years at that department, he spent a further four years as Secretary of State for Transport, while also becoming Secretary of State for Scotland in 2003.

He also procured the passage of the legislation – the Railways and Transport Safety Act 2003 – which abolished the Rail Regulator and replaced the post with the Office of Rail Regulation.

At the 2005 general election, he won the seat.

The Labour Party was so concerned that Darling might be defeated that several senior party figures, including Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott and Chancellor Gordon Brown, made encouragement trips to the constituency during the campaign.

Despite being a senior Cabinet Minister, Darling was hardly seen outside the area, as he was making the maximum effort to win his seat.

In the event he won it with a majority of 7,242 over the second-placed Conservative candidate, the latter having been held back by the Liberal Democrats coming in a close third.

Darling won by a comfortable 16.5% margin on a 65.4% turnout.

Blair moved Darling for a final time in 2006, making him President of the Board of Trade and Secretary of State for Trade and Industry.

After Brown succeeded Blair as prime minister, he promoted Darling to replace himself as Chancellor of the Exchequer in 2007, a position he remained in until 2010.

He served as Chancellor during the financial crisis of 2007–2008 and the Great Recession.

In 2010, despite Labour's defeat nationally, he received an increased majority of 8,447.

From 2012 to 2014, Darling was the chairman of the Better Together Campaign, a cross-party group that successfully campaigned for Scotland to remain part of the United Kingdom in the 2014 independence referendum.

On 3 November 2014, Darling announced that he was standing down at the 2015 general election.

He was nominated for a life peerage in the 2015 Dissolution Honours and sat in the House of Lords until his retirement in 2020.

According to Chris Giles of the Financial Times, Darling was "one of the most consequential post-war chancellors in modern British history".

He was a vocal advocate for the Remain campaign for the 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum.