Alistair Darling's speech to the unions was admirable but dull

For quiet rationality Alistair Darling's speech to the TUC yesterday was hard to fault. In troubled times, the need to maintain hard-won economic stability is more important than ever, he repeatedly told delegates in Brighton. They didn't dance in the aisles, but they didn't riot either. Darling in the lion's den was doomed to be a quiet encounter.

The problem was that the chancellor's appearance on the rostrum was preceded by a protracted cry on pain and bewildered anger about the sheer unfairness of it all. This time (it is not always the case) the unions have an alibi: the economic crisis triggered by the credit crunch and the global commodity price spike is not their fault.

Worse, much of the blame can easily be attached to their historic enemy, unbridled capitalism, in the shape of a greedy banking sector, bloated and overextended, which - as Darling said - didn't actually understand the risks it was taking.

"We only lend now to people where we understand the risk," one banker recently reassured Darling. But don't be fooled. They will do it again. They will. "It's different this time," is a recurring battle cry of the speculator.

In more demagogic hands than the chancellor's an anecdote like that could have got them cheering. There were other good lines like it. No more fat bonuses paid "for big mistakes" in banking - which should return to "old-fashioned" habits. No free ride for the energy giants - "we'll do more, they must do more". And as he rattled off those worthy reforms to improve the lives of working trade unionists since 1997, Darling said - several times - "you campaigned for it, we agreed" and did it.

But Alistair Darling doesn't do red meat politics, though - as Private Eye pointed out this week - he did have a Trot phase in his political youth as a turbulent member of Lothian regional council, defying Margaret Thatcher's calls to cap the rates. It's hard to imagine now of this epitome of the clean-shaven, ultra-calm technocrat, as devoid as any politician I have known of self-promoting ego. He does extra winter fuel allowances and loft insulation, useful but uninspiring.

So the TUC discounts its gains - don't we all? - and yesterday saw a succession of union leaders who should know better by now calling for renationalisation of the major utilities, electricity, water, gas and even the railways. A scandal that they remain in private hands 11 years after the return of a Labour government, said one.

All right, the Tory privatisations have been a mixed bag, some of them expensive and not very good. But I am typing this in a clean, modern train carriage, speeding towards London, my laptop plugged into a power point. Most - not all - of my travel on the network is much better than it was. And, unlike for inflation, the unions do share some of the blame for the decay of the state-owned industries of the past.

What Darling was trying to convince them of yesterday is the need to avoid a wage-price spiral of the kind we used to have in the Heath-Callaghan-Thatcher decades. Yes, oil and food prices have soared - lots of reasons for that: Iraq, the rise of the new Asian middle class, the ethanol fad - but they will settle down again. "Tough times", but we can get through them if we avoid the excesses of the 70s and 80s, the chancellor insisted. When inflation bites harder, the poorest suffer most and the rich - bankers included - get away with it. Some of life's unfairness is not susceptible to legislation.

All of which is boring, but also true. Remember that the Chinese saying "May you live in interesting times" is a curse. We live in dull times; aren't we lucky? They may not last. Meanwhile TUC delegates, the rank and file rather less than their leaders, rage against "obscene and immoral" profits, the "madness and gluttony" of marketised energy policies, the sheer unfairness of the emerging two-tier workforce that denies decent pay and conditions to contract staff.

Much of it is true and Darling's reminders of slow, incremental reforms ("tips won't count as part of the minimum wage. You campaigned for it, we agreed") are no match for stirring rhetoric and an overarching vision. "A stable economy is not an optional extra, it's a means to an end - fairness,'' he told them.

Admirable if dull sentiments, but it would take a Laurence Olivier or a Tony Blair to squeeze a round of applause out of such remarks. On TV yesterday's applause in the cavernous, antiseptic Brighton conference centre sounded even more tepid than the boos. The government may look anaemic, but so can the Brothers.