Alistair Darling

Scarlett Maguire, the founder and director of polling firm Merlin Strategy.

Catherine McLeod, former Labour special adviser, worked for Alistair Darling in the Treasury.

The Labour MP for Milton Keynes North, Chris Curtis, formerly of the Labour Growth Group, and Paul Ovenden, who's former director of strategy at 10 Downing Street.

He worked for Keir Starmer.

But I think they definitely had a strategy to get out of it.

And I think what they failed to do was convey to people the light at the end of the tunnel that John Healy talked about today.

I think that when I was in the Treasury in 2007 at the beginning of the crisis, I don't mean I can't speak for Alistair Darling or Gordon Brown, but certainly I don't think anybody anticipated just how awful it was going to be.

They knew it was difficult.

I don't know what I said, but I know what I think and I assume it's what I said.

Was that Donald Rumsfeld or was that Alistair Darling? That

was, I would imagine, Alistair Darling has been in the news more than Rumsfeld.

Rumsfeld doesn't work anymore, does he? I thought it was Dick Cheney, one of those is gone, so I would imagine it's Darling.

It's not, it's Rumsfeld, and I can play you him saying it.

It's about, right, how do we find a different angle to present it? And I think there was clearly a consideration by the SNP about their own base and their own activist base and their conference coming up, because I actually think it was aimed towards that audience more than it was...

anything beyond that but you know I was kind of reminded in some ways I was thinking back to the referendum in 2014 and thinking about that first debate between Alistair Darling and Alex Salmond and I thought one of the really effective things that Alistair Darling did in that debate was say look what's not up for discussion and debate here is the idea that Scotland is a nation that has an identity that has a right to choose its future you know and he pointed that all out to Alex Salmond and then he pointed out actually though you've got some pretty fundamental questions you're not answering about currency and about how things would change in an independent Scotland and all of that.

So I think what Michael Marra sought to do in the debate is to say, well, of course a child could tell you that Scotland is a nation and has a right to choose, but actually there are some pretty fundamental issues that need to be dealt with right now.

And also, and Michael Marra said this in his contribution in the debate, The way that you affect the change that the SNP want to see and make a case for independence is by building that sustained evidence, you know, that it's the settled will of the Scottish people.

It's a twenty-four-hour news cycle.

A-Alistair, you must be the first to accept this, that, uh, everything could be only short term if you allowed it to happen, because every day you've got something that you've got to react to.

Every day there's a new event.

I tell the story about, um, President Kennedy in the early 1960s coming to meet Harold Macmillan, and he comes to, to London to meet him, and Macmillan is still asleep.

And it's, yeah, it's the same with speech writing.

I'm trying to embody, well, at the time it would have been John Prescott or Alistair Darling.

And they're so similar.

I mean, this is very, very exciting.

A stellar cast today.

Joining me this week, Sam White was Chief of Staff to Keir Starmer when he was Leader of the Opposition and was a spin doctor for Alistair Darling when he was charged with the exchequer.

Emma Pryor is a former Conservative special adviser who worked with the Government Chief Whip and at the Department of Environment, Food and Royal Affairs.

And Olly Grender is now Baroness Grender, a former Director of Communications for the Liberal Democrats.

yeah, I mean, definitely.

Even experienced politicians.

I remember when Alistair Darling was Chancellor, this was early days before the global financial crisis, and now long forgotten, we had these two lost discs with all the...

And I remember him saying, well, before you go for the interview round, I'm going to say some difficult things to you and call for your resignation.

Gordon Brown didn't have any animals either.

It was really when Gordon Brown became Prime Minister and Alistair Darling became Chancellor that Sybil, who was Alistair Darling's cat, came in, the family cat, and he later actually went to live with the senior civil servant who was close to the Darling family, or she, sorry, Sybil.

But there was, during a Cabinet meeting, Sybil was in the Cabinet room and there was a very disapproving look from, I think it was Jackie Smith, if I remember correctly, he was the Home Office, Sybil made, shall we say, a contribution to the cabinet meeting, which perhaps shouldn't have been made.

I seem to remember when Blair didn't replace Humphrey, that was quite a big story.

On the back of that failure to sell the policy, we then saw a number of things come out of Downing Street.

So Alistair Darling, who was then the chancellor, commissioned the Manchester Independent Economic Review, which was published by Jim O'Neill, who was at the time the chair of Goldman Sachs Asset Management, alongside Jonathan Kestenbaum, who was the chief executive of Nesta.

We talk about a lot, who now own the Behavioral Insights team.

And again, that was about promoting greater devolution Greater inward investment, which means international capital coming in and buying up assets and doing things that make it a lot of money.