Profile

Alistair Darling has established a track record as the minister who takes on controversial jobs and moves them off the front page. True to form, yesterday, he could not have done much more to play down his first Budget.

He specialises in being low-key, making a political virtue out of being a bit suave, a bit dull and a bit Scottish, while causing no offence.

The 54-year old Edinburgh South-West MP, married to a former journalist at The Herald, comes from an establishment Edinburgh and Hebridean background. He attended Loretto in Musselburgh, studied law at Aberdeen University and then became a hard-left ideologue on Lothian Regional Council. Those who recall those days, between 1982 and 1987, relish the contrast with today's Chancellor.

Since then, Alistair Darling has become the safe pair of hands who played Whitehall's Blairite-Brownite power game with skill. While Tony Blair trusted him as the man to call when a department was in trouble - most notably with welfare and then transport - he never posed any political threat to Gordon Brown. His rise to the Chancellorship was on the basis that Brown, unlike his predecessor, needed someone living next door at Number 11 with whom he could work closely.

Mr Darling has faced a troubled eight months in the Chancellor's job, with the Northern Rock crisis and the loss of 25 million people's personal details from the department he heads. There was a rapid re-write of Budget plans when the autumn election plans were ditched, which contributed to botched reform of capital gains tax. When Number 10 blamed that on the Chancellor, Mr Darling was reportedly furious, but his fury is as low-key as everything else about him.

Although he has faced calls for resignation over Northern Rock, he remains an important lightning rod for Gordon Brown, sharing the unwelcome limelight at awkward monthly press conferences. If he were to be forced out, it would only leave his boss even more exposed.