Letters From A Tory

Dear Alistair Darling,

With bets already being furiously placed on your departure before the end of 2008, it is little surprise that this year has got off to a bad start.  Although the beginning of the Northern Rock crisis was probably not your fault to a large extent, the resulting mess has certainly been your responsibility.

As nationalisation for Northern Rock looms, thanks to the Government missing the boat on several much better alternatives in the immediate aftermath of the crisis (including doing nothing at all in response to the banks demise, which was my preferred option), your reputation is hanging by a thread.  Well, I say ‘reputation’ - you have only been Gordon Brown’s puppet thus far and I see little chance of this changing.  Regardless of whether the Northern Rock debacle was your fault, your spectacular failure to confront the media and instead rely on a few carefully crafted Commons statements has painted a very weak picture of you in the mind of the electorate.  Your preferred option at present seems to be setting up nationalisation by stealth rather than face up to scrutiny; no surprise there.

In a bizarre parallel to the Iraq war, the Northern Rock problems should never have occured in the first place.  But after digging a hole for this country on both occasions, it was Labour’s duty to get us out of the respective holes in the best way possible.  On both occasions, Labour have failed.

Yours sincerely,

A.Tory