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Alistair Darling, who served as chancellor under Gordon Brown, has died at the age of 70, his family has confirmed.

The Labour Party stalwart became a household name when the then-prime minister gave him the keys to the Treasury back in 2007 – running the department throughout the global banking crisis and staying in post until Mr Brown lost the election in 2010.

But he had been a presence in Tony Blair’s government from the start, beginning as chief secretary to the Treasury in 1997 following Labour’s landslide victory, and going on to run a number of departments – including work and pensions, transport and trade.

Politics latest: Tributes to former chancellor flood in from across UK

Lord Darling’s family confirmed the news on Thursday, saying he had died after a short spell in Western General Hospital under the “wonderful care” of the cancer team.

In their statement, they described him as “the much-loved husband of Margaret and beloved father of Calum and Anna”.

After the news was announced, tributes poured in from all sides of the political spectrum, led by Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer, who said he had “lived a life devoted to public service”.

He said Lord Darling’s “calm expertise and honesty” as chancellor helped guide the country through the 2008 financial crisis, but that his “greatest professional pride” was serving his constituents in Edinburgh as an MP between 1987 and 2015.

File photo dated 24/3/10 of chancellor Alistair Darling holds up his ministerial red box on the steps of 11 Downing Street, London, before heading to the House of Commons to announce the Government's budget plans. Former chancellor and veteran Labour politician Alistair Darling has died aged 70, a spokesperson on behalf of his family said. Issue date: Thursday November 30, 2023.
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He was perhaps best known for his time as chancellor

Echoing the sentiment, ex-prime minister Mr Brown tweeted that he “like many, relied on his wisdom, calmness in a crisis and his humour”, adding: “He will be missed by all who knew him.”

In another statement, Mr Blair said: “He was highly capable, though modest, understated but never to be underestimated, always kind and dignified even under the intense pressure politics can generate.

“He was the safest of safe hands. I knew he could be given any position in the Cabinet and be depended upon. I liked him and respected him immensely as a colleague and as a friend.”

One of his Conservative successors, Jeremy Hunt, described him as “one of the great chancellors”, saying he would be “remembered for doing the right thing for the country at a time of extraordinary turmoil”.

And the woman hoping to follow in his footsteps to the Treasury, shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves, said she would miss “his advice and his counsel – but, more than anything I will miss his friendship, his kindness and decency, his humour and his warmth”.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said Lord Darling’s passing “is a huge loss to us all”. He added: “The role he played during the 2014 Independence referendum was vital in keeping our union together. My deepest condolences go out to his family and friends at this difficult time.”

File photo dated 16/9/14 of Better Together campaign leader Alistair Darling and former Prime Minister Gordon Brown (right) during a campaign event at Clydebank Town Hall in Scotland. Former chancellor and veteran Labour politician Alistair Darling has died aged 70, a spokesperson on behalf of his family said. Issue date: Thursday November 30, 2023.
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Gordon Brown made him his righthand man after he moved into Number 10 in 2007

Despite being Born in London, Lord Darling came from a long line of Scots, and returned to the country for school, before going to the University of Aberdeen, where he became president of the Student’s Representative Council.

After graduating, he became a solicitor, but having joined Labour aged just 23, it wasn’t long before he changed course to enter politics, being elected as a councillor on the Lothian Regional Council in 1982.

He became the MP for Edinburgh South in the 1987 election, ousting the Conservative candidate from the seat. When that constituency was abolished in 2005, he ran for – and won – the seat of Edinburgh South West until he left the Commons in 2015.

Lord Darling also played a prominent role in the Scottish independence referendum in 2014 as the chairman of the “Better Together” campaign.

Former first minister and SNP leader, Nicola Sturgeon, said despite the “clashes” the pair had over the country’s future, she “always found him to be a man of intellect and principle”, adding: “He made a significant contribution to politics and public life.”

Better Together leader Alistair Darling launches the organisation's 100 Days to Go campaign during an event at Community Central Hall in Glasgow.
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Picture by: Danny Lawson/PA Archive/PA Images
Date taken: 09-Jun-2014
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Alistair Darling led the campaign for Scotland to remain in the UK

Lord Darling became a peer in 2015 – named as Baron Darling of Roulanish, He retired from the Lords in 2020.

His former cabinet colleagues from both the Blair and Brown years were among those marking his passing, with Hilary Benn calling him “an able, calm and thoughtful colleague” and Jacqui Smith praising his “warm, humble approach”.

From the other side of the Commons, former Tory prime minister Sir John Major described Lord Darling as “a decent man, who brought civility, reason and intelligence to politics”, while David Cameron said he was “thoroughly kind”.

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Inside ‘data centre alley’ – the biggest story in economics right now

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Inside 'data centre alley' - the biggest story in economics right now

If you ever fly to Washington DC, look out of the window as you land at Dulles Airport – and you might snatch a glimpse of the single biggest story in economics right now.

There below you, you will see scattered around the fields and woods of the local area a set of vast warehouses that might to the untrained eye look like supermarkets or distribution centres. But no: these are in fact data centres – the biggest concentration of data centres anywhere in the world.

For this area surrounding Dulles Airport has more of these buildings, housing computer servers that do the calculations to train and run artificial intelligence (AI), than anywhere else. And since AI accounts for the vast majority of economic growth in the US so far this year, that makes this place an enormous deal.

Down at ground level you can see the hallmarks as you drive around what is known as “data centre alley”. There are enormous power lines everywhere – a reminder that running these plants is an incredibly energy-intensive task.

This tiny area alone, Loudoun County, consumes roughly 4.9 gigawatts of power – more than the entire consumption of Denmark. That number has already tripled in the past six years, and is due to be catapulted ever higher in the coming years.

Inside ‘data centre alley’

We know as much because we have gained rare access into the heart of “data centre alley”, into two sites run by Digital Realty, one of the biggest datacentre companies in the world. It runs servers that power nearly all the major AI and cloud services in the world. If you send a request to one of those models or search engines there’s a good chance you’ve unknowingly used their machines yourself.

Inside a site run by Digital Realty
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Inside a site run by Digital Realty

Their Digital Dulles site, under construction right now, is due to consume up to a gigawatt in power all told, with six substations to help provide that power. Indeed, it consumes about the same amount of power as a large nuclear power plant.

Walking through the site, a series of large warehouses, some already equipped with rows and rows of backup generators, there to ensure the silicon chips whirring away inside never lose power, is a striking experience – a reminder of the physical underpinnings of the AI age. For all that this technology feels weightless, it has enormous physical demands. It entails the construction of these massive concrete buildings, each of which needs enormous amounts of power and water to keep the servers cool.

Sky's Ed Conway at the data centre
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Sky’s Ed Conway at the data centre

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We were given access inside one of the company’s existing server centres – behind multiple security cordons into rooms only accessible with fingerprint identification. And there we saw the infrastructure necessary to keep those AI chips running. We saw an Nvidia DGX H100 running away, in a server rack capable of sucking in more power than a small village. We saw the cooling pipes running in and out of the building, as well as the ones which feed coolant into the GPUs (graphic processing units) themselves.

Such things underline that to the extent that AI has brainpower, it is provided not out of thin air, but via very physical amenities and infrastructure. And the availability of that infrastructure is one of the main limiting factors for this economic boom in the coming years.

According to economist Jason Furman, once you subtract AI and related technologies, the US economy barely grew at all in the first half of this year. So much is riding on this. But there are some who question whether the US is going to be able to construct power plants quickly enough to fuel this boom.

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Is Trump’s AI plan a ‘tech bro’ manifesto?

For years, American power consumption remained more or less flat. That has changed rapidly in the past couple of years. Now, AI companies have made grand promises about future computing power, but that depends on being able to plug those chips into the grid.

Last week the International Monetary Fund’s chief economist, Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas, warned AI could indeed be a financial bubble.

He said: “There are echoes in the current tech investment surge of the dot-com boom of the late 1990s. It was the internet then… it is AI now. We’re seeing surging valuations, booming investment and strong consumption on the back of solid capital gains. The risk is that with stronger investment and consumption, a tighter monetary policy will be needed to contain price pressures. This is what happened in the late 1990s.”

‘The terrifying thing is…’

For those inside the AI world, this also feels like uncharted territory.

Helen Toner, executive director of Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology, and formerly on the OpenAI board, said: “The terrifying thing is: no one knows how much further AI is going to go, and no one really knows how much economic growth is going to come out of it.

“The trends have certainly been that the AI systems we are developing get more and more sophisticated over time, and I don’t see signs of that stopping. I think they’ll keep getting more advanced. But the question of how much productivity growth will that create? How will that compare to the absolutely gobsmacking investments that are being made today?”

Whether it’s a new industrial revolution or a bubble – or both – there’s no denying AI is a massive economic story with massive implications.

For energy. For materials. For jobs. We just don’t know how massive yet.

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Pizza Hut to shut 68 restaurants in UK after company behind venues falls into administration

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Pizza Hut to shut 68 restaurants in UK after company behind venues falls into administration

Pizza Hut is to close 68 restaurants and 11 delivery sites with the loss of more than 1,200 jobs after the company behind its UK venues fell into administration.

The company has said 1,210 workers are being made redundant as part of the closures.

DC London Pie, the firm running Pizza Hut’s restaurants in the UK, appointed administrators from corporate finance firm FTI on Monday.

It comes less than a year after the business bought the chain’s restaurants from insolvency.

On Monday, American hospitality giant Yum! Brands, which owns the global Pizza Hut business, said it had bought the UK restaurant operation in a pre-pack administration deal – a rescue deal that will save 64 sites and secure the future of 1,276 workers.

A spokesperson for Pizza Hut UK confirmed the Yum! deal and said as a result it was “pleased to secure the continuation of 64 sites to safeguard our guest experience and protect the associated jobs.

“Approximately 2,259 team members will transfer to the new Yum! equity business under UK TUPE legislation, including above-restaurant leaders and support teams.”

Nicolas Burquier, Managing Director of Pizza Hut Europe and Canada, called Monday’s agreement a “targeted acquisition” which, he said, “aims to safeguard our guest experience and protect jobs where possible.

“Our immediate priority is operational continuity at the acquired locations and supporting colleagues through the transition.”

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The administration came after HMRC filed a winding up petition on Friday against DC London Pie.

DC London Pie was the company formed after Directional Capital, which operated franchises in Sweden and Denmark, snapped up 139 UK restaurants from the previous UK franchisee Heart with Smart Limited in January of this year.

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Bank of England job fears as Andrew Bailey warns of tough choices

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Bank of England job fears as Andrew Bailey warns of tough choices

Staff at the Bank of England are on alert for potential job cuts in Threadneedle Street after the governor, Andrew Bailey, warned of tough decisions about the institution’s future cost base.

Sky News has learnt that Mr Bailey informed Bank of England employees in a memo last week that it was taking a detailed look at costs, although it did not specifically refer to the prospect of redundancies.

One source said the memo had been sent while Mr Bailey was attending the International Monetary Fund (IMF) meeting in Washington.

Its precise wording was unclear on Monday, but one source said it had warned of “tough choices” that would need to be made as the bank accelerated its investment in new technology.

They added that managers had been briefed to expect to have to make savings of between 6% and 8% of their operating budgets.

The Bank of England employed 5,810 people at the end of February, of whom just over 5,000 were full-time, according to its annual report.

Those numbers were marginally higher than in the previous year.

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The central bank’s budget, funded through a levy, is expected to be £596m in the current financial year.

The workforce figures include the Prudential Regulation Authority, Britain’s main banking regulator, which is set to get a new boss next year when Sam Woods steps down after two terms in the role.

A Bank of England spokesperson declined to comment on the contents of Mr Bailey’s memo.

They also declined to provide details of the timing of any previous rounds of redundancies at the bank.

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