Exactly: QE worked. The large-scale creation of money by the state is the most powerful stimulus policy imaginable. Contrary to an unfortunate and mistaken thesis in Keynes's 1936 General Theory, such money creation can halt any recession. But the success of QE in 2009 has a disturbing message for Darling and, more particularly, for Brown and King, the main architects of October's bank recapitalisation. The message is simple: QE could have been announced in October 2008 instead of the recapitalisation. If the emphasis in official policy had been on the quantity of money, instead of on punishing banks and their allegedly despicable capitalist management and shareholders, the catastrophic macroeconomic numbers of early 2009 could have been prevented. 

Darling comes out of this book as a decent and thoughtful man. He would have worked easily with Eddie George in another crisis of a similar kind, and Britain would have "muddled through" well enough. His misfortune was to be the understudy to two awkward, difficult and over-promoted men, Gordon Brown and Mervyn King, the odd couple of the Great Recession. Unfortunately, he was party to the key macroeconomic and banking decisions of late 2007 and 2008. Contrary to his claims in Back from the Brink, these decisions were mostly wrong, and the results have been a catastrophe from which Britain will take many years to recover.