Darling: Brown in No 10 was chaos

4 September 2011 Last updated at 04:21 ET

Mr Darling says that he and David Miliband had a meeting to discuss how to get rid of Mr Brown

Gordon Brown’s final years in office were pervaded by a “permanent air of chaos and crisis”, according to former Labour chancellor Alistair Darling.

In his memoirs, being serialised in the Sunday Times, Mr Darling said Mr Brown’s leadership was “hopeless”.

He also said the former prime minister thought the economic crisis would only last six months and was “indifferent” to Mr Darling’s more pessimistic view.

The Edinburgh MP also claimed Mr Brown tried to replace him with Ed Balls.

Mr Darling said meetings were “tortuous”, with decisions unable to be reached and appointments cancelled and rearranged at the last minute.

“The management of Gordon’s time by No 10 was, from my perspective, hopeless. There was a permanent air of chaos and crisis,” he said.

‘Hellish’

Another key extract revealed how the relationship between the two men entered particularly “dark days” during the early days of the financial crisis in autumn 2008.

Mr Brown was convinced that the situation could be resolved in six months and was livid when his chancellor told the press that the UK financial outlook was the worst for 60 years.

“The problem was that clearly he did not trust my advice, and he appeared indifferent to what I thought.”

Mr Darling said that, when confronted, the prime minister denied launching a campaign of anonymous briefings against him, but he describes the period as “hellish… very personal. It left a scare on me… just can’t get over it.”

His memoirs also find issue with the praise that Mr Brown has received by many for engineering the plan to save the banks.

“In the aftermath of this crisis there have been many who have claimed authorship of what proved to be a highly successful plan,” wrote Mr Darling.

“It really doesn’t matter who thought of the scheme first. What matter is that it worked. What I know is that the Treasury, the Bank and the FSA started this work… under my instruction.”

Mr Darling described how he refused to be reshuffled in May 2009 and take up the post of foreign secretary, despite feeling excluded by Mr Brown and his allies.

“Part of me wanted to go. I was tired of the atmosphere of feuding and the perpetual sniping. Our friendship had been strained beyond breaking point,” he wrote.

“In many ways I wanted out; I’d had enough. And yet another part of me did not want to be forced out at this stage.”

Mr Darling also revealed that a month later, in an attempt to oust Mr Brown and his “fairly brutal regime”, he held a meeting with David Miliband, the former foreign secretary.

The two leading politicians met at an Essex farmhouse to “discuss whether there was any way of getting rid of Gordon”.

Mr Darling said they concluded such a move was not possible at the time.

“That afternoon we came to a pretty unsatisfactory conclusion: that Gordon wouldn’t leave; that there was no alternative leader in prospect; and that there was an inevitability that we must just soldier on.”

Mr Darling’s book – Back from the Brink: 1,000 Days at Number 11 – is being published later this week.

The former prime minister has not yet responded to Mr Darling’s claims, but on Tuesday refused to comment on other claims attributed to the book that he had a “brutal and volcanic” mood.

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