Brian Reade interviews Chancellor Alistair Darling: Highly-paid footballers can 'contribute to the country where they live'

For a man running up a tab that's moving into trillions, Alistair Darling is surprisingly chilled out.

I tell him if I'd taken out mind-blowing loans that won't be settled for decades, I'd wake up screaming every night. But he smiles and assures me that he sleeps very well.

When I accuse him of being too soft on greedy bankers, or ask if he's up to the job of rescuing our sinking economy, he answers in a knowing, relaxed way.

But mention foreign footballers whingeing about his 50% tax rate and his eyes tighten, his arm is waved about and anger floods out.

He says: "When they run on to the pitch they should take a good look around the terraces and remember most people don't earn anything like they do.

"These people are being paid £100,000 a week, and that's just a starting salary. When there's people forking out a large proportion of their wages to see them, who will never be in the same income league, they ought to be realistic.

"It's a separate question how football clubs can carry on paying those wages. But if someone is worth an £80million transfer fee, they can contribute to the country where they live." It makes a change for the Chancellor to be sitting in Number 11 talking about footballers.

Indeed, talking about anything other than spending cuts.

Everyone knows they will have to be made and would like to see him lay his axe on the table. But spending cuts is the policy that dare not speak its name. Instead, it's called choices.

"Spending will be tighter and we'll have to make tougher choices.

"The question people should ask at the next election is, 'Which party is on your side? Who will make a difference for your children and grandchildren'. If you go through hard times, you need to adjust. It doesn't mean you tear everything up. We didn't spend 12 years building the NHS to see it fall away. We will not turn our back on improvements to the fabric of the country.

"But there will be some things that we'll have to do later, or not do at all. The most important thing is telling people where we are."

That's all very well, I say, but people don't believe you know where you are.

"I know people are very cynical about politics right now," he says, "and it's difficult to get your message across. But we have to tell them there will be choices.

"Frontline services - health, schools, crime reduction - will be protected. We're prepared to switch money from things that are a lesser priority. For example, we'll say we need money for public sector housing but other things will have to wait."

He's giving no indication as to how deep or soon the cuts, sorry, choices, will be. There will be a pre-budget statement in the autumn, and then the budget itself, but he says there's too much uncertainty in the economy to nail down specifics.

And he won't be drawn on where the axe will fall. But if you work for a quango, keep looking over your shoulder.

"We do need a rigorous examination of where we're spending money in that area. But some of the quangos, like the Highways Agency, are things that we need. Having said that, we need to look at everything departments are doing, because times are going to be tighter and we've got to get our borrowing down."

Mr Darling, 55, is one of only three men, along with Jack Straw and Gordon Brown, to have served continuously in the Cabinet for the past 12 years.

He has been Minister for Trade and Industry, Transport, and Work and Pensions. But nothing could have prepared him for his two years as Chancellor in the eye of an economic hurricane.

"It's been incredibly difficult to the point where, last October, we were hours away from the entire banking system collapsing. This is the toughest time for a chancellor since the 30s but I thrive on difficulties.

I am up to this job and I'd like to stay in it. This business is unfinished. We've stabilised things and I want to see it through. I believe we can do it."

One obstacle Mr Darling has had to deal with is voters' disgust over expenses. Like every other MP, when you mention this subject, his shoulders drop.

"Trust has taken a real knock and the fault lies with every one of us. We had the means to put it right over the past 20 or 30 years but we didn't."

There were calls for Mr Darling's resignation after it was shown he'd flipped his second home four times. Did the revelations hurt him?

"If people impugn your integrity of course that affects you. The case of the service charge on my flat especially. It isn't pleasant being interviewed by every TV channel . But it's like anything else in life… you have to face up to what you do and you have to deal with it."

The expenses scandal, like the world recession, is not totally the Government's fault. But the public blame Labour. Why should anyone bother to re-elect them?

"Because there's a very clear difference between us and the Tories.

And it's as clear as it's been since Margaret Thatcher's time.

"Where Cameron stands and where Gordon stands are very different.

We are committed to helping people get on. In the 80s and 90s, when we went through a similar recession, a whole generation were written off. Many were parked on benefits and never got back into work.

"Whenever Tories get into power, people are held back. They are more interested in helping the few. I don't think that's changed. When they dabbled with the environment, Cameron rode his Huskies to the Arctic and (up to a point) cycled into work. You don't hear much about the environment from them now. It's been abandoned, like hug a hoodie.

It's a policy for the day." He's getting animated, eyes blazing away under jet black brows that contrast starkly with his grey mop of hair.

"I don't know where Cameron sees the country going. The one policy he has got - taking some top people out of inheritance tax - that's the past not the future."

As he warms to his evil Tory theme, the word "choices" is flipped back to "cuts".

"They're using the global recession as a convenient cover for what they would do anyway, which is cut people's standards of living and prospects," he says.

"They would cut now, cut next year and keep this country mired in recession. Their philosophy hasn't changed. They put it in a nicer way, but it hasn't changed one bit.

"There is a clear difference in the choices a Labour government will make from the ones you'd get under the Tories."

If I were a betting man, I'd put a few trillion quid on Making The Right Choices being Labour's slogan at the next election. With the cuts being left to the Tories.

As the bonus culture creeps back in, the Chancellor has a stark warning for bankers: "You need to get real and live in the same world as the rest of us.

"We can't afford a repeat of the mistakes you made where huge risks were taken to earn huge bonuses, which brought our banks to their knees.

"We've told Lloyds and RBS there won't be bonuses this year. No rewards for failure.

The regulator now has powers to say you cannot have bonuses that reward people like that."

But don't you insult taxpayers who bailed out RBS by awarding new boss Stephen Hester a £9.6million pay deal?

"RBS is the biggest bank in the world and we own it. We need to get our money back so we need to employ someone who can do that.

"Besides, he doesn't get his money until he ensures we make a £15billion profit."