Alistair Darling warned Rachel Reeves not to fall into “Tory traps” as Labour prepares for the next election, the shadow chancellor has said, as she revealed how he helped shape the party’s current policies before he died.
Reeves said she was in regular contact with the former chancellor before his death, which was announced on Thursday by his family. She said the former chancellor had been a mentor to her, both when she was a new MP and later when she began to shadow his former brief.
“He quite quickly took me under his wing [after she was elected in 2010] and was a bit of a mentor to me,” Reeves told the Guardian. “I would speak to Alistair regularly and I would see him quite regularly. When I was campaigning in Scotland I would make sure to see him and have dinner with [his wife] Maggie and him. I very much benefited from his advice and wisdom.”
She said Darling had emphasised to her the need to be open about the scale of the economic problems Labour would inherit if it won the next election, and not to make promises she did not intend to keep.
Reeves has avoided promising to commit more money to daily departmental spending despite pressure from Labour MPs to help bolster Britain’s frayed public services. “[Darling] told me you’ve got to make sure your sums add up; don’t promise things you can’t deliver; you’ve got to be watertight,” she said. “The Tories will try and set traps for you – don’t fall into them.”
Darling’s family said he had died after being hospitalised with cancer. Political leaders from all major parties have paid tribute to a man seen by many as one of the most competent senior ministers of the New Labour years.
The former prime minister Gordon Brown, who made Darling his chancellor in 2007, said on Friday he had been integral to shoring up the financial system after the crash in 2008 and ensuring the economy began to grow afterwards. Brown’s predecessor Tony Blair said: “[Darling] was highly capable, though modest; understated but never to be underestimated; always kind and dignified even under the intense pressure politics can generate.”
Many close to Darling believe his role in designing and pushing through the bank bailout of 2008 has been underappreciated.
Reeves said: “The bank recapitalisation, taking their assets on to our country’s balance sheet, guaranteeing people’s deposits to stop the run on the banks, the quantitative easing programme that injected the liquidity into the economy – all of these were novel policies he signed off, helped steer through parliament and built a national consensus for.”
Some also believe his naturally cautious approach has been taken up by the current Labour leadership. Darling famously earned the wrath of those around Brown by telling the Guardian in 2008 that the UK economy was in its worst state for 60 years, and he then went into the following election promising deeper spending cuts even than those carried out by Margaret Thatcher.
Starmer said this week he had been “incredibly fortunate to have benefited from Alistair’s counsel and friendship”.
Reeves said Alistair and Maggie Darling had watched her respond to the recent Autumn statement from his hospital bed. “They were cheering me on,” she said.
Asked whether Darling would have gone into the next election promising to match Conservative spending plans, which would mean 4.1% annual cuts across unprotected departments, she said: “He would have said: ‘Be honest with people and don’t overpromise. People will believe you, don’t let them down.’”
