IT CAN’T be a lot of fun being Chancellor of the Exchequer. You would be looking at Alistair Darling for a long time before the words ‘happy’ and ‘carefree’ sprang to mind.

So it was unusual for him to give a relaxed interview to a national newspaper at the weekend.

Normally, chancellors decline to offer an opinion on more or less anything to do with the economy.

Even a harmless question such as “is the pound coin round?” will lead to an outbreak of non-committal harrumphing which gives nothing away, and certainly doesn’t commit the cautious speaker to the roundness or otherwise of the pound coin.

But there was the chancellor, granting an interview at his family croft on the Isle of Lewis, telling us that the economic conditions “are arguably the worst they’ve been in 60 years”, while also observing that voters were “p***** off” with the Government.

An awful lot of fuss was caused by what Mr Darling had to say.

First, the usual political opportunists jumped into the arena, virtually wetting themselves with indignation and yah-boo prattling.

Then the financial markets jittered and Sterling tumbled to a 12-year low against the euro. And all because poor Alistair chatted to a nice woman reporter from the Guardian while in a holiday mood, when he would rather have been pottering around in his inflatable dinghy while the cold Scottish air ruffled his surprising eyebrows.

Pardon the eyebrows reference, which is flip of me. But it is hard not to think of Alistair Darling without remembering those jet-black furry ledges that lie beneath the grey clouds of his hair.

To return to higher matters, here’s what I don’t understand. The chancellor, to borrow a phrase, tells it like it is. He admits that the economy could be heading for dire straits, and he observes too that most people are fed up with the Government.

Both of these statements are blindingly obvious. Mr Darling was speaking the truth, yet he was pilloried for it. This was odd in a sense, because people often say they would value more honesty from politicians. Yet when a politician does offer some unvarnished truth, our over-heated political culture goes perfectly mad, and heads straight into panic-about-nothing overdrive.

Partly it is down to the adversarial nature of politics, the us-and-them tit-for-tat-ness of it all. It is also because those of us in the media do like a crisis, and a Government slowly swirling round and round towards the plughole of doom is a story with a beginning, a middle and – best of all – a watery end somewhere in sight.

For all that, it would surely be better if we allowed for a bit more honesty and plain speaking.

As for Sterling taking a skid, that had been going on for ages, so it seems a bit strong to blame that one on the chancellor’s unguarded words. Next time, if there is a next time, Alistair Darling will be back to mumbling that he wouldn’t like to say what shape a pound coin was, if that’s all right with you.


* IF ALISTAIR Darling is up to his neck at the deep end of the political pool, Susan Wade Weeks is splashing around trying to get herself noticed at the shallow end.

There was an enjoyable story in The Press this week in which the Liberal Democrats were accused of a hi-tech hijack against Ms Wade Weeks, the Conservative candidate for York Central.

A local party activist bought up certain websites addresses so that anyone who typed her name would be directed to a Liberal Democrat page. According to the story, it’s all been sorted out now, and the “automatic forwards”, whatever they are, have been removed.

Still, Ms Wade Weeks could always indulge in her own chicanery, and invest in an internet address called www.libdemscockeduptheBarbican.com