The MT Interview: Alistair Darling
The former Chancellor of the Exchequer delivers his verdict on the fledgling Coalition, the financial crisis and a certain recently-published memoir.
It was Enoch Powell who said: 'All political lives, unless they are cut off in midstream at a happy juncture, end in failure, because that is the nature of politics and of human affairs.'
I cannot help thinking on this as I greet Alistair Darling, who was until a few months ago the Chancellor of the Exchequer. His new office is at the top of Portcullis House, the building MPs use across the road from the House of Commons.
The room is completely empty, apart from a desk in the corner with a few papers on it, a computer, a bare meeting table and a few chairs. On the bookshelves there are just a handful of volumes. Among them is Tony Blair's memoir, A Journey, which stands out because it's got yellow Post-It labels - presumably the sections relating to Darling - sticking out of the side. An assistant sits in a small ante-room, listening in.