Alistair Darling was one of the most consequential politicians of the past half-century but he had the misfortune to be a quiet, self-effacing man and so the scale of his contributions has never been recognised. He was not by nature a Westminster man, not someone who lived for briefings and gossip and the soap opera stuff. He courted journalists who had to be courted, met with City figures who had to be met, but it was never about the game for him, and not even the players, but about the results.

There was an austerity about his demeanour – to certain London commentators he was just another dour Scot – but this solemnity was a reflection of the seriousness of the work. In private, he was warm, witty, convivial, and generous with both his time and his claret. He was a humble, dignified man and though he was treated shoddily by No. 10 in his time as chancellor he was saddened rather than bitter about it.

He kept mementos of his time at the Treasury but he did not live on past glories. Five years ago, when he was awarded an honorary doctorate by Aberdeen University, I wrote a column in the Scottish Daily Mail calling for his contributions to public life to be accorded the esteem they deserved. I was reliably informed that he was mortified reading it. He had an ego, as we all do, but it was tempered as Scottish egos tend to be by the twin tyrannies of Calvinism and egalitarianism. It’s hard to get pauchtie in a country where people say ‘Ah kent yer faither’ not as a pleasantry but as a rebuke.

There will be enough obituaries of the man in the coming days but I want to reflect on two examples of his public service and its magnitude. The first is his time as chancellor, which was monopolised by the global financial crisis. The 2007-2010 Labour government got things wrong in its response but much of what it got right was down to Darling. It was Darling who propped up the UK financial sector after Wall Street went into meltdown.

Britain’s economy truly was staring into the abyss. The run on Northern Rock had the potential to tip the first domino on the collapse of one bank after another, with no high street or City institution safe, and with the punishing consequences that would have brought. The risk of a 1930s-style social and economic catastrophe was more real than we liked to admit then or now.

Because of Darling’s actions, a catastrophe was managed down to a crisis. He brought Northern Rock into public ownership, backed British banks with the Treasury’s financial heft, and stimulated the economy with neo-Keynesian interventions. It was crude and messy and couldn’t stave off a recession but it held the sector and the economy together. Moreover, it saved the country from the kind of fiscal brutality seen in Spain, Portugal, Italy and elsewhere. Darling did all this while being briefed against by No. 10, obsessed as No. 10 always is by power and positioning.

He later had to watch as David Cameron and George Osborne turned virtue into vice for electioneering purposes. Come the 2010 election, they were maligning the unavoidable fiscal implications of Darling’s rescue strategy as proof that Labour couldn’t be trusted with stewardship of the economy. They castigated the firemen for causing water damage and, what’s worse, it worked. It is apt that Darling was followed in office by Osborne, for there could be no more historically insightful contrast in leadership, diligence and intellectual seriousness.

The financial crisis was not to be Darling’s final service to the country. When Cameron decided to give the SNP a referendum on Scottish independence, Darling was tapped to head up the Better Together campaign, which urged Scots to vote No on 18 September 2014. He presided over a cross-party effort that saw Labour and Tory politicians work hand-in-hand for the first time in Scotland. This greatly displeased many in Labour who had built their careers demonising Tories and wanted Darling to run a Labour-only operation.

When the SNP swept Labour from all but one of their Scottish seats in the 2015 election, some on the Labour left and in the commentariat blamed what they saw as Darling’s historic error of allying with the Conservatives. But it was not an error and if it was a trap, it was one Darling and other senior Scottish Labour figures walked into with eyes opened. They knew the Better Together alliance had the potential to do severe damage to Labour’s electoral fortunes in Scotland but they also knew that a divided No campaign could easily lose against a big personality like Alex Salmond. Darling and others put country before party in an act of supreme patriotism.

Better Together was not perfect. Better Together did not exist on the same continent as perfect. But for all its mistakes and missteps, it got the job done. Of course, that didn’t all come down to one man but because that one man was Darling, he did more than his fair share. Setting aside his work behind the scenes, Darling’s prime triumph was the first televised debate held one month before voters cast their ballots. The Yes campaign was narrowing No’s lead in the polls and No. 10’s jitters had developed into outright panic.

Now staid, unexciting, low-key Darling was to face off against Salmond, one of the liveliest political performers Scotland has produced. As had happened when he was in Number 11, Darling was briefed against by his own side and, as in No. 11, he had been underestimated. He turned his boring bank manager reputation to his advantage, hammering Salmond and his case for independence as risky, poorly thought through and driven by one man’s ego. I watched that debate from the floor that night. I listened to sceptical politicians and hacks as they tried to process the clear victory of the man they had written off. I saw an ashen-faced Alex Salmond bundled away by his advisers. He was beaten and he knew it.

The No campaign’s margin of victory on referendum night – 55 per cent to 45 – was not as wide as it ought to have been but the fact it was a victory at all was down in large part to Darling. He steered the No campaign through Labour squabbling, Tory unpopularity and Downing Street blunders to overcome the almighty SNP against a backdrop of UK austerity. Were there another independence referendum in the near future, there might be no figure in British politics who could bring the kind of leadership to the No campaign that Darling brought to Better Together.

Alistair Darling was a leader, a pragmatist, an idealist, a sincere social democrat, a doer, a thinker, but he deserves to be remembered as a patriot – a Scottish patriot and a British patriot. He not only saved the country, he saved it twice. In death he is due the recognition he never asked for in life.