For some time past a ghost has been standing behind Alistair Darling sardonically monitoring his every action and thought with the expertise that comes from having lived through the United Kingdom’s last encounter with the dilemmas that are posed by the onset of a World Depression. And it is not John Maynard Keynes, who during the 1930s was little more than an observer and commentator. It is of course the Labour Party’s first and probably most formidable Chancellor of the Exchequer, namely Philip Snowden.