The former chancellor of the exchequer,Alistair Darling, was widely considered a colourless and unobtrusive member of the last Labour government. But he certainly made waves in the summer of 2008, when he said that the economic outlook was "arguably the worst" it had been in 60 years. And the downswing, he reckoned, would be "more profound and long-lasting than people thought".
He was bang on the money then, of course, and he isn't exactly brimming with optimism now either. A key worry is the high and ever-rising level of consumer debt accumulated in the past few years. He thinks that this, along with the uncertainty generated by Brexit, should be triggering "alarm bells".
When interest rates rise, "and they will go up, if not this year then certainly next year, and suddenly people find they are going to be paying more in their monthly payments, that's when you need to watch out". On the plus side, banks are "much better capitalised" and regulators are also "far more sharp and ready to intervene than they were ten years ago".
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It's just as well they are more vigilant now, adds Darling, because we learnt ten years ago that "something that can start as apparently a small ripple in the water can become mountainous seas very quickly." The endless euro crisis also holds an important lesson for regulators. One of the reasons state action during the financial crisis worked was "because we did far more than people expected and we did it far more quickly than people expected", he says. The endless faffing around over Greece suggests that, "if you want to really put a firewall up, you've got to do something quite drastic".
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