...this was the weekend after Chancellor Alistair Darling announced he was cutting VAT from 17.5% to 15% in a £12.5bn bid to get tills jingling faster and the economy back on its feet. "I don't think it will make any difference," says Pat Laugh lin, in town from...
...weeks ago, Anthony McNicoll, reporter of News of the World, broke the news that Alistair Darling, the Chancellor of Exchequer, has been using shoe polish as makeup to "enhance his manly brows." Not to be outdone, the Sun, on the following day, ran a front-page...
...year's Budget was the difficult situation in the world economy." Duties on beer and wine are to rise above inflation with Alistair Darling slapping a hefty tax on whisky, perhaps 50p a bottle, ending a 10-year freeze on spirit duties. And from next April,...
...to Chancellor of Exchequer & PM Gordon Brown 1. Abolish Tax Havens 2. Tobin Tax Now 3. Total Reform of CAP Dear Alistair Darling & Gordon Brown, In these extraordinary times a world-wide coalition of people from civil society are calling on you to take...
...on the window ledge, but we're keeping the window open just in case.' Amid bank runs, credit crunches and tax revolts, Alistair Darling maintains an eerily zen-like calm which astounds his civil servants. I'm told that the Chancellor reacted with complete...
... Who is the real Alistair Darling? What kind of brain lurks behind those majestic eyebrows? What moves the man, what motivates him, what makes him tick? The truth, says Edmund Conway, is that the Chancellor remains something of an enigma, even after nine...
...the savagery of a dead sheep. The spectre of Geoffrey Howe stalks the corridors of Number 10. It is a universal axiom that Alistair Darling, the nominal Chancellor of the Exchequer, is as loyal to Gordon Brown as Greyfriars Bobby was to his master. So commentators...
...that the American economy may seize up completely and go on to paralyse ours is real. Into this perilous situation steps Alistair Darling. The most celebrated policies of his period as Chancellor of the Exchequer are his proposals to double the tax on capital...
...Prime Minister today defended the move to nationalise Northern Rock and backed his Chancellor, Alistair Darling, insisting that he had made the right decision. Gordon Brown appeared alongside Mr Darling at a Downing Street press conference to stress that...
...panic and despair. On Monday, in London and other centres, something very similar happened. Vague: Chancellor Alistair Darling leaving the House of Commons on Monday where he made the 'worthless commitment' to do everything necessary to solve the crisis The...