Guido has often thought that history will be a lot kinder to Alastair Darling than anyone else who survived serving in the last government. Knowing exactly how to pick his moments, we have seen glimpses of the truth from Darling, especially with his “forces of hell” comments. Well his memoirs are going to be bad news for Brown and Balls and their attempts to rewrite history. Labour Uncut have seen extracts:

“Darling details the total breakdown in trust between the prime minister and chancellor. He singles out Ed Balls and Shriti Vadhera as key Brown lieutenants running what amounted to a shadow treasury operation within government. Brown’s demeanour was increasingly “brutal and volcanic”, mistrusting Darling to the extent that he repeatedly tried to place his own aides in the treasury ministerial team to report back on what the chancellor was doing.

Darling point-blank refused to have the newly-enobled Shriti Vadhera in his team, describing her as “only happy if there was blood on the floor – preferably that of her colleagues”. He accepted Yvette Cooper as chief secretary to the treasury in January 2008, but was equally clear that the main reason Brown had placed her there was to “keep an eye” on him.”

Darling also apparently confirms for the first time that Brown tried to sack him in 2009 and replace him with Ed Balls. Something that the latter has point-blank denied in the past. There’s a pattern emerging here, and it’s going to be tricky for Balls to deny it all this time…