Was Hillary Benn making a plea to save Alistair Darling ?

Looking at the BBC website earlier it was odd to see two stories that were unrelated to each other seem to overlap.

Firstly, there was this story

Which seemed to imply that Alistair Darling, often referred to as "the Badger" because of his grey hair and black eyebrows, was effectively a "dead man walking"

Then there was this separate story

And in this story Hillary Benn is suggesting that culling badgers is not the answer.

Was Hillary Benn making a plea to save Alistair Darling ? Perhaps I need to go to bed early, but I thought the two stories seemed strangely parallel.