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Hi, you're listening to Podlitical BBC Scotland's podcast

That brings you an inside look at the biggest stories

coming out of Hollywood and Westminster. It's quarter past

two on Thursday 30th of November. I'm Lucy White, a journalist based in Glasgow and today I'm joined by.

I'm Phil Sim, a journalist based at the Scottish Parliament. And I'm Kirsten Campbell, a journalist also

based at the Scottish Parliament. So we did have an episode planned for today, but just within

the past couple of hours, we have had the news that Alistair Darling, the former Chancellor and

the leader of the Better Together campaign in the independent referendum has died at the age of

70. So we thought we would take this opportunity to just

reflect on his political career, which I think is fair enough to say, Kirsten, falls into the

remarkable camp. Yeah, I mean, it was a really long and respected career. He started off as a counsellor.

He ended up in the House of Lords.

And in the middle, he was kind of the longest serving member of the Labour government.

He had various ministerial positions in transport, a Scottish secretary, a chief secretary of the Treasury.

But of course, most notably,

as Chancellor of the Exchequer under Gordon Brown. And it was him who bailed out, you know,

the Royal Bank of Scotland. He said afterwards that, you know, the country was hours away from a

breakdown of law and order if the bank hadn't been bailed out. And he was a really, you know,

central figure during that whole financial out. And he was a really, you know, central figure

during that whole financial crash. And in fact, he had warned about it in the summer of 2008,

...