Former Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling was once regarded as a quiet man of politics, but his new book is making a bit of a noise. He chats to Steve Pratt ahead of an appearance at the Durham Book Festival.

"YES and no," says former Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling in response to one question. "I am and I am not," he replies to another. This appears to be a classic case of political fencesitting.

No wonder many believe a straight banana would be easier to get than a straight answer from a politician. Yet Darling – one of the headline guests at this year’s Durham Book Festival – doesn’t dodge questions, and replies that appear to indicate he wants to have it both ways don’t so much deny an answer as take a roundabout way to get there.

Advance coverage of his book, Back From The Brink: 1,000 Days At Number 11, concentrated on his criticism of former prime minister Gordon Brown. Coming from Darling, an MP of 25 years’ standing who was regarded as one of politics’ quiet men, the criticism was all the more surprising. Although, if you pause to consider the circumstances and what actually happened, it’s understandable.

He calls it “a traumatic period”. This is something of an understatement considering he had (to quote his book cover) “to avert the collapse of RBS hours before the cash machines would have ceased to function; at the 11th hour, he stopped Barclays from acquiring Lehman Brothers in order to protect UK taxpayers; he used anti-terror legislation to stop Icelandic banks from withdrawing funds from Britain”.

Clearly he was never short of a crisis during his time in Number 11. Matters at this time of global financial catastrophe were made more difficult as he and Brown disagreed over several fundamental things – how long the economic crisis would last and how to deal with the deficit.

As he says, if he’d written the book and not mentioned their working relationship, he would have been accused of leaving things out.

And if, as he’s done, he does mention it, he’ll be accused of muck-raking and disloyalty. It was a no-win situation for a minister regarded as “a pair of safe hands” to head such tricky departments as social security, work and pensions, transport and trade and industry.

He has had no reaction from Brown. “We have not seen much of each other since the election,”

he says. “We occasionally bump into each other in the House of Commons and have spoken to each other, but both reached the conclusion that a period of silence on our part is good. We are both grown up and will carry on and get along.”

DARLING is discovering what the public think of him and his New Labour colleagues during public appearances at book festivals and the like. He’s finding that people aren’t interested in the politicians, but the banks.

“There’s a lot of interest in banks,” he points out. Is he surprised by this? That elicits the “I am and I am not” reply. He elaborates by recalling that when he could “escape” from Downing Street and talk to people, he discovered they couldn’t understand how banks had got it so wrong. These were institutions they’d grown up with and believed the people paid large sums of money to be in charge knew what they were doing.

Then there’s the problem the public has of understanding why a problem with, say, the Greek economy has anything to do with this country.

These sort of things dictated the sort of book he wanted to write. “I was asked so many questions that I really wanted to write for somebody who had an interest in politics and current affairs, but didn’t care about the day-to-day inner squabbling among politicians,” he explains.

“Once you talk about banks people glaze over and assume you are trying to pull the wool over their eyes.”

He raises the matter of Northern Rock, no doubt mindful of the North-East audience that might read this. “How was it that an apparently successful building society ended up completely bust?” he asks (although as an ex-Chancellor, you hope he’s worked out the answer).

“The question people asked is how management didn’t know this and why didn’t regulators spot this. These are very pertinent quetions and something like Northern Rock was so important to the North-East because it was a very big private sector employer in a sector that needs more private sector employers.

“My guess now is that it’s going to come through it. I remember visiting Newcastle in 2009 and being struck by the enthusiasm in Northern Rock. Of course, there have been a lot of job losses, but it’s so much better than it might have been.”

Then, on a bigger scale, there’s the UK economy.

When he took over apparently everything was fine after ten years of financial growth. He recalls The Guardian interview in 2008 in which he talked of the economy in terms of being the worst downturn in 60 years. “All hell broke loose” is how he describes the reaction to comments he regarded as the truth, but which others on both sides of the chamber refused to acknowledge.

“For three weeks I was condemned for what I said and it was only when banks collapsed that people began to say maybe it is right,” says Darling.

The criticism clearly stung but he points to the saying that “if you want to be popular, don’t go into politics”.

Darling is now on the back benches. Is it difficult to leave government behind. “Yes and no,” comes the answer. He doesn’t miss things like the weekend telephone calls and the delivery of red boxes of ministerial papers, but “if you look at what’s been happening over the past few weeks, I do find it frustrating because like most people in politics, I would rather be doing something than talking about it”.

YOU wonder if the current Chancellor has put the country on the road to economic recovery? “The big lesson you should learn from Northern Rock is don’t stand looking at it, sort it,” he says.

He worries that the austerity programme is squeezing the life out of the economic recovery.

But at least now he’s no longer in government he can speak his mind. “One of the good things about not being on the front bench is that I can say what I want,” he remarks.

• Back From The Brink: 1,000 Days At Number 11 is published by Atlantic Books, £19.99.

• Alistair Darling appears at Durham Book Festival, Durham Town Hall, on Saturday, October 22, at 8pm. Tickets 0191-332-4041, online at galadurham. co.uk, from the Gala Theatre, or at durhambookfestival.com