Alistair Darling

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The Rt Hon Alistair Darling
Secretary of State for Trade and Industry
In office May 2006 – present
Preceded by	Alan Johnson
Succeeded by	Incumbent
Constituency	Edinburgh South West
Majority	7,242 (16.5%)
Born	November 28, 1953
Political party	Labour
Website	DTI Website

Alistair Maclean Darling (born November 28, 1953) is a British politician. He is the Labour Party Member of Parliament for Edinburgh South West in Scotland, and is Secretary of State for Trade and Industry.

Contents 1 Education and early career 2 Parliamentary career 3 Future Cabinet office 4 Public profile 5 Satire 6 See also 7 Bibliography 8 External links

[edit] Education and early career

Darling was born in London and educated at Loretto School, Musselburgh, East Lothian, before attending the University of Aberdeen where he was awarded a Bachelor of Laws (LL.B). He became a solicitor in 1978, then changed course for the Scots bar and was admitted as an advocate in 1984. He was elected as a councillor to the Lothian Regional Council in 1982 and served until he was elected to parliament. He was also a board member for the Lothian and Borders Police. He was a governor of Napier College in 1985 for two years.

[edit] Parliamentary career

He entered Parliament at the 1987 General Election in Edinburgh Central defeating the sitting Conservative MP Sir Alexander Fletcher by 2,262 votes, and has remained an MP since. As a backbencher he sponsored the Solicitors (Scotland) Act 1988 [1]. He soon became an Opposition Home Affairs spokesman in 1988 on the frontbench of Neil Kinnock. After the 1992 General Election he became a spokesman on Treasury Affairs until being promoted to Tony Blair's Shadow Cabinet as the Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury in 1996. Following the 1997 General Election he entered Cabinet as the Chief Secretary to the Treasury. He became a Member of the Privy Council on entering Cabinet.

In 1998 he was made the Secretary of State for Social Security replacing Harriet Harman who had been dismissed. After the 2001 General Election, the department for Social Security was abolished and replaced with the new Department for Work and Pensions, which also took employment away from the education portfolio, Darling headed the new department until 2002 when he was transferred to the Department for Transport, in the wake of his predecessor Stephen Byers resigning after a great deal of criticism.

As Transport Secretary, Darling was given a brief to "take the department out of the headlines" and was widely considered to have achieved this, although he was also criticised for achieving too little else whilst he held the transport brief. He oversaw the creation of Network Rail, the successor to Railtrack, which had collapsed in controversial circumstances for which his predecessor was largely blamed. He also procured the passage of the legislation - the Railways and Transport Safety Act 2003 - which abolished the Rail Regulator and replaced it with the Office of Rail Regulation. He was responsible for the Railways Act 2005 which abolished the Strategic Rail Authority, a creation of the Labour government under the Transport Act 2000.

Although he was not at the Department for Transport at the time of the collapse of Railtrack, Darling vigorously defended what had been done in a speech to the House of Commons on October 24 2005. This included the making of threats to the independent Rail Regulator that if he intervened to defend the company against the government's attempts to force it into railway administration - a special status for insolvent railway companies - the government would introduce emergency legislation to take the regulator under direct political control. This stance by Darling surprised many observers because during his tenure at the Department for Transport he had made several statements to Parliament and the financial markets assuring them that the government regarded independence in economic regulation of the railways as essential.

After the Scottish Office was folded into the Department for Constitutional Affairs, he was made Scottish Secretary in combination with his transport portfolio in 2003. In the Cabinet reshuffle of May 2006, he was moved to his current position of Secretary of State for Trade and Industry; Douglas Alexander replaced him as both Secretary of State for Transport and Secretary of State for Scotland. On 10 November 2006 in a mini-reshuffle, Malcolm Wicks, the Minister for Energy at the Department for Trade and Industry and therefore one of Darling's junior ministers, was appointed Minister for Science. Darling took over day-to-day control of the Energy portfolio.

Darling is the great nephew of Sir William Darling who was Conservative MP for Edinburgh South (1945–1957). He has been married to Margaret McQueen Vaughan since 1986 and they have a son and a daughter. After the creation of the Scottish Parliament the number of Scottish seats at Westminster was reduced, his Edinburgh Central seat was abolished and since 2005 he has represented the new seat of Edinburgh South West. The Labour Party was so concerned that Darling might be defeated in Edinburgh South West in the 2005 general election that several of the most senior of the party's leading members - including Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott and Chancellor Gordon Brown (Darling's political mentor) - made supportive visits to the constituency during the election campaign, and despite being a senior Cabinet minister himself during the campaign Darling was hardly seen outside the area, so hard was he working to win the seat. In the event, he won it comfortably, with a majority of 7,242 over the second-placed Conservative candidate, a 16.49% margin on a 65.4% turnout.

[edit] Future Cabinet office

Although he is frequently tipped as a leading contender to be appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer if Gordon Brown succeeds Tony Blair as prime minister, Darling's qualifications for appointment are not obvious. His record as a minister is mainly one of being so cautious as not to make any decisions of significance, at least not without the prior specific approval of Gordon Brown. Other commentators believe that may be Darling's greatest advantage in his hopes to succeed Brown at the Treasury.

[edit] Public profile

Although he is one of only seven Ministers who have been continuously in the Cabinet since New Labour gained office at the May 1997 general election, Darling's public recognition rating is low. He was voted Britain's most boring politician two years running. [2] In his book Servants of the People, about New Labour's first term of office (1997-2001), Andrew Rawnsley described Darling as a "managerial technocrat" of a type preferred by Prime Minister Tony Blair. "Robotic" is another description which is sometimes applied to him.

[edit] Satire

Due to his unusual combination of white hair and black eyebrows, he is a frequent target by Paul Merton on Have I Got News For You. Paul has on numerous occasions sparked debates as to whether Darling dyes his hair or his eyebrows. When Ian, his fellow panel member, told him that Darling once had a black beard too, Paul finally decided that he dyed his hair.

[edit] See also

• Cabinet of the United Kingdom

[edit] Bibliography

• Torrance, David, The Scottish Secretaries (Birlinn 2006)

[edit] External links

• 10 Downing Street — Alistair Darling official biography
• Cabinet Reshuffle News article
• Guardian Unlimited Politics — Ask Aristotle: Alistair Darling MP
• TheyWorkForYou.com — Alistair Darling MP
• BBC Profile of Alistair Darling from 2006
• BBC Profile of Alistair Darling from 2002

Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by Alex Fletcher	Member of Parliament for Edinburgh Central 1987 – 2005	Succeeded by (constituency abolished)
Preceded by (new constituency)	Member of Parliament for Edinburgh South West 2005 – present	Incumbent
Political offices
Preceded by William Waldegrave	Chief Secretary to the Treasury 1997 – 1998	Succeeded by Stephen Byers
Preceded by Harriet Harman	Secretary of State for Social Security Later Sec. State Work and Pensions 1998 – 2002	Succeeded by Andrew Smith
Preceded by Stephen Byers Sec. State Transport, Local Government and the Regions	Secretary of State for Transport 2002 – 2006	Succeeded by Douglas Alexander
Preceded by Helen Liddell	Secretary of State for Scotland 2003 – 2006
Preceded by Alan Johnson	Secretary of State for Trade and Industry 2006 – present	Incumbent