Alistair Darling will stay chancellor if Labour wins election

Less than a year ago Alistair Darling almost lost his job as chancellor, when Gordon Brown came close to installing his long-serving ally Ed Balls in the treasury. Now Darling is untouchable after Gordon Brown's confirmation in tomorrow's Guardian that he will keep his job if Labour wins the election. Brown tried to offer Darling, an old friend from Scotland, another cabinet job, thought to be in the Home Office, in the runup to last June's European elections. Brown's allies felt Darling was pedestrian, insufficiently political and too gloomy about the state of the economy. Darling, who had to unpick the disastrous impact of abolishing the 10p tax rate, dug in his heels. He survived, partly because Brown had been weakened by James Purnell's cabinet resignation, minutes after the European polls closed. Since then, he has garnered a reputation for honesty and unruffled calmness.