How underrated chancellor Alistair Darling helped weather financial crisis

The rescue packages put together by the Treasury and the Bank of England were the high point of Darling’s spell as chancellor. Photograph: Luke MacGregor/Reuters

Alistair Darling spent three turmoil-filled years as Gordon Brown’s chancellor but the crunch came in October 2008 when he was summoned out of a meeting of EU finance ministers to take a call from Royal Bank of Scotland, then the UK’s biggest bank.

The news was grim. RBS was running out of cash and would soon have to close branches and shut down cash machines. “How long have you got?” Darling asked, expecting the answer to be a couple of days. He was told the bank had two or three hours before it ran out of money.