THE fruits of that era when Tony Blair held power as head of UK plc became apparent last week and a few more of those who benefited duly cashed in. Alistair Darling certainly had a good week. Having just taken his seat in the Upper House as the Lord Darling of Roulanish, it was announced that he had been appointed to the board of Morgan Stanley, the global banking and investment house. Chairman of the firm, James Gorman, expressed delight at the acquisition of a former chancellor of the exchequer to his board. “He [the Lord Darling] played a central role in responding to the financial crisis. The board, our management and our shareholders will greatly benefit from his experience and perspective.”

Presumably, His Lordship, who once declared that there was no reason why an independent Scotland couldn’t be successful only to change his tune when the referendum campaign became a bit tricky, has done his homework on Morgan Stanley and asked some tough questions about their background. This was the firm which borrowed some $107.3 billion from the US government during the credit crisis, by far the most of any bank, according to data compiled by Bloomberg News, in 2008.

According to Bloomberg, the data for this figure revealed “how close the New York-based bank came to running out of cash because of a run on its prime brokerage, the unit that finances hedge funds’ trades and holds their cash and securities”.

“These were like hot-money deposits that could flee in an instant,” said Tanya Azarchs, a former Standard & Poor’s analyst who covered Morgan Stanley during the crisis and is now a consultant in Briarcliff Manor, New York. The firm “never thought that the hedge funds would get that spooked”. The bank, it was revealed, never got round to informing investors about the extent of its Fed borrowings, “even as they rose to the most in the 97-year history of emergency lending by the US central bank” added Bloomberg.

I’m told that Morgan Stanley is a far better run financial services unit these days; nonetheless they will be comforted that they have acquired the services of a man who threw billions at our own financially incontinent banking institutions around the same time as Morgan Stanley was benefitting from the largesse of USA tax-payers. All things considered, this seems like a very good fit.

It was a good week too for Gordon Brown, Blair’s Iron Chancellor and his immediate successor as Prime Minister. Brown was appointed to the board of Pimco, the world’s largest bond manager.

Representatives of the former UK Premier hastily pointed out that any fees earned in relation to this work will go to Brown’s charitable foundation, but bond management and the acquisition and dealership of assets on behalf of the world’s super-rich does though, seem to be a curious occupation for former lieutenants in the party of the people. Neither the Lord Darling nor Gordon Brown though, will ever expect to match the quantum of material rewards that have accrued to their former boss Blair.

His property empire and portfolio of hugely-paid posts advising potentates and aggregates in the Middle East is truly eye-watering and testament to his powers of persuasion. It seems then only fair that some of his closest followers should have a chance to follow their leader’s example and cash in.

Blair and Brown, of course, have been prominent among those recently predicting catastrophe for the party that gave them the platforms from which to launch their careers in business.

Each expressed significant disquiet about the prospect of Jeremy Corbyn becoming leader of their beloved party. Blair, in particular, just can’t seem to let it go. He was at it again last week in an article for the right-wing Spectator magazine in which he expressed his fear that Labour under Corbyn had now become a “protest movement” which was avoiding the “hard thinking” that is required to return to power. He talked about having “the courage to adhere to [principle] when confronted with reality”.

I think I know what Blair is getting at here. He seems to be suggesting that principles are worthless if they prevent you ever from gaining power.

If you are attempting to defeat the devil then you must first fight with some of the devil’s weapons. Corbyn’s sin, it seems, is that he’s trying to defeat the devil by deploying purer methods.

These methods though, have been approved by an overwhelming majority of rank and file party members who, despite what Blair and some of his acolytes infer, are not at all stupid and naïve. Having seen the gap between rich and poor become one of the widest in the civilised world over a period in which New Labour and the Conservatives have been in power, they have plainly said: “Enough”.

What is the point, they ask, of gaining power if you are simply going to squander it by not effectively reversing some of the most draconian measures and legislation of a previous reactionary Conservative administration?

Blair though, plainly doesn’t understand this.

He had a three-term government characterised by light-touch regulation of the banking industry (and look where that got us); a failure to close tax loopholes for the country’s richest people and conglomerates and a refusal to reverse some of the worst of Margaret Thatcher’s anti-trade union legislation.

What is the point of leading a Labour Party into power and then retreating from using an unprecedented majority to address the wickedness at the heart of much of what had gone before?

Many, including I suspect, Jeremy Corbyn, would rather be deemed political failures than to betray the core principles of his party by becoming something else entirely.