"darling and Brown are widely believed to have saved us all from a massive global meltdown"
Brown might have got more credit (and I speak as someone who voted Labour in every general election since, and including, 1983) had he not been an obvious mentalist who went around calling his own voters bigots. And Labour might have got more credit had they not arranged a coronation of an obvious mentalist.
There's a great line in Chris Mullin's new book of diaries. In the aftermath of the 2005 election, Blair is supposed to have said, referring to his time as an advisor to Roy Hattersley, "I was loyal through three defeats; all I am asking is for people to be loyal through three victories". Blair won three general elections, even in the face of the supposed outrage about Iraq. Brown lost, catastrophically, to a half-way convincing Tory lightweight, trashing Labour's hard-won reputation for economic competence, sound policy on crime and (especially) approach to immigration on the way. A lot of Labour MPs who lost their seats might like to ask themselves why they assented to the coronation of a man who was obviously, laughably unelectable from the off, and why they allowed disloyal scum like Ed Balls to plot to install their hopeless master.
There are any number of people who could have stood for the leadership the Labour Party had Blair wanted to step down (and there's no evidence he actually did). Perhaps Brown would have won, in which case he would at least have had some legitimacy, perhaps he wouldn't. But Labour never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity, so did the easy, quiet, stupid thing and installed him unopposed. Their self-indulgence (along with their corruption, see scum like Margaret Moran) lost the last election. That, and attitudes to immigration that made Marie Antoinette look in touch.