Alistair Darling is not a man to indulge in cheap political pyrotechnics. Indeed he is the original straight kind of guy in politics, but he is seething with anger at claims that he fixed the treasury forecasts ahead of the election to make things look better than they are. In a long interview with the Guardian he says he is going to be after Cameron every day to demand a big apology from him if as he suspects the borrowing forecasts published by the new office of budget responsibility on Monday do not show any sign of a deterioration in the borrowing forecasts since he published his own projections in the March budget. He thinks Cameron has been misleading the public by making up claims that he had found the books were even worse than Darling had said. This is high risk stuff from Darling. He does not know what the OBR headed by Professor Sir Alan Budd will say on Monday so by highlighting this issue he could yet be riding for a fall. There is every liklihood that Budd will...
11 Jun 2010:
For 22 years, Alistair Darling has been at the forefront of British politics. So how does the ex-chancellor feel about taking a backbench seat – and Tory accusations that he concealed the true state of the economy?
11 Jun 2010: James Denselow: Using social scientists in military human terrain teams blurs the lines between independent academia and partisan militarism