Alistair Darling has said he is more worried now following the decision to leave the European Union, than he was when Chancellor during the 2008 financial crash.

Lord Darling, who steered the nation through the recession in 2008 under Gordon Brown’s premiership, warned that the current “vacuum” in politics risk making a “bad situation worse”.

“We’ve got no Government, we’ve got no Opposition. The people who got us into this mess have run away – they’ve gone to ground and we now have a four month gap before we’re likely to get a new Prime Minister,” Mr Darling told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

During the EU referendum campaign Lord Darling joined forces with George Osborne, the Chancellor, to warn of an emergency Budget in the event of a Brexit. They claimed that £15 billion of tax rises and £15 billion of spending cuts would been needed to make up for a £30 billion “black hole” created by Britain’s exit from the EU.

Lord Darling added: “It is not a happy situation, which is why I am more worried now than I was in 2008. A difficult problem could be fixed because you could see what you needed to do. Here, there is so much uncertainty, so many unknowns; it is going to be very damaging for the country.

Darling on Leaving EU

“I quite accept that the negotiations can’t start until we have a new Prime Minister but we cannot have a fourth month period during which nothing happens – we’ve got to think very seriously about what relationship, what trade relationship we have with the European Union…where are we on free movement of people, which is such a pivotal issue.”

“We have taken this decision and we have no plan for the future”.

6 ways Britain leaving the EU will affect you Show all 6 1 /6 6 ways Britain leaving the EU will affect you 6 ways Britain leaving the EU will affect you More expensive foreign holidays The first practical effect of a vote to Leave is that the pound will be worth less abroad, meaning foreign holidays will cost us more nito100 6 ways Britain leaving the EU will affect you No immediate change in immigration status The Prime Minister will have to address other immediate concerns. He is likely to reassure nationals of other EU countries living in the UK that their status is unchanged. That is what the Leave campaign has said, so, even after the Brexit negotiations are complete, those who are already in the UK would be allowed to stay Getty 6 ways Britain leaving the EU will affect you Higher inflation A lower pound means that imports would become more expensive. This is likely to mean the return of inflation – a phenomenon with which many of us are unfamiliar because prices have been stable for so long, rising at no more than about 2 per cent a year. The effect may probably not be particularly noticeable in the first few months. At first price rises would be confined to imported goods – food and clothes being the most obvious – but inflation has a tendency to spread and to gain its own momentum AFP/Getty Images 6 ways Britain leaving the EU will affect you Interest rates might rise The trouble with inflation is that the Bank of England has a legal obligation to keep it as close to 2 per cent a year as possible. If a fall in the pound threatens to push prices up faster than this, the Bank will raise interest rates. This acts against inflation in three ways. First, it makes the pound more attractive, because deposits in pounds will earn higher interest. Second, it reduces demand by putting up the cost of borrowing, and especially by taking larger mortgage payments out of the economy. Third, it makes it more expensive for businesses to borrow to expand output Getty 6 ways Britain leaving the EU will affect you Did somebody say recession? Mr Carney, the Treasury and a range of international economists have warned about this. Many Leave voters appear not to have believed them, or to think that they are exaggerating small, long-term effects. But there is no doubt that the Leave vote is a negative shock to the economy. This is because it changes expectations about the economy’s future performance. Even though Britain is not actually be leaving the EU for at least two years, companies and investors will start to move money out of Britain, or to scale back plans for expansion, because they are less confident about what would happen after 2018 AFP/Getty Images 6 ways Britain leaving the EU will affect you And we wouldn’t even get our money back All this will be happening while the Prime Minister, whoever he or she is, is negotiating the terms of our future access to the EU single market. In the meantime, our trade with the EU would be unaffected, except that companies elsewhere in the EU may be less interested in buying from us or selling to us, expecting tariff barriers to go up in two years’ time. Whoever the Chancellor is, he or she may feel the need to bring in a new Budget Getty Images

Asked whether he “overdoing the gloom”, the former Chancellor replied: “There was turbulence on Friday and more I suspect in the days ahead. Boris Johnson seems to be treating this as a big game, the last four months were just a jolly laugh, it really didn’t matter – nothing is going to change.