Ed Balls « Labour Uncut

Posts Tagged ‘Ed Balls’

Canny Harold’s lessons for the two Eds

14/02/2011, 07:00:16 AM

by Kevin Meagher

Clem Attlee may be lionised as a great prime minister. Tony Blair revered as an election winner.

But you need to cast a backward glance to the swinging sixties and sagging seventies to see that it is Harold Wilson (Labour leader between 1963 and 1976, serving as prime minister for eight of those years) who has the most to teach Eds Miliband and Balls.

For Ed Miliband, Wilson’s successor-but-seven, there are three main lessons to be learned.

The first is in managing the party. This was no mean feat back in the 60s and 70s. Wilson led during the golden age of Labour dissent. He had to contend with a cabinet containing some of the hugest egos British politics has ever produced: Crossman, Jenkins, Healey, Callaghan, Castle and George Brown.

Wilson sat pre-eminent amid this mass of turbulent, squabbling, brilliance; partly, it has to be said, through the involuntary tactic of being distrusted by just about everyone.

But Wilson used talent effectively. His Gaitskellite chancellors: Callaghan, Jenkins and Healey – each loathed Wilson and were all strong potential replacements; yet Wilson co-opted their brainpower and political brute force for the good of his governments. (more…)

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Sunday News review

30/01/2011, 06:59:24 AM

Ed meets the troops

Ed Miliband vowed yesterday he would not play “party politics” with British troops as he made his first visit to Afghanistan as Labour leader. Speaking in Helmand province, Mr Miliband backed PM David Cameron’s timetable to end combat operations there by 2015. He told troops: “Our mission is not a matter of party politics. It is about doing what is right for our country. A more stable Afghanistan will lead to a more safe Britain. You have our support, our respect and our admiration.” Mr Miliband toured Camp Bastion base, meeting the injured. He then went to Shawqat, scene of fierce fighting, with defence spokesman Jim Murphy and Shadow Foreign Secretary Douglas Alexander. – Sunday Mirror

Ed Miliband pledged yesterday not to play ‘party politics’ with the military campaign in Afghanistan after making his first visit to the war-torn country. Addressing British troops in the volatile Helmand province, the Labour leader insisted that Britain was ‘united’ behind the military effort. But he also backed the Coalition’s plans to end UK combat operations by 2015, saying: ‘It is right that this is not a war without end.’ Mr Miliband said: ‘I want you to know that our mission in Afghanistan is not a matter of party politics. It is about doing what is right for our country. A more stable Afghanistan will lead to a more safe Britain. ‘Above all, I want you to know that you have our support, our respect and our admiration for what you are doing for our country.’ Accompanied by Shadow Defence Secretary Jim Murphy and Douglas Alexander, the Shadow Foreign Secretary, the Labour leader toured the British forces’ main base at Camp Bastion and met injured soldiers. He then travelled to Shawqat, which has seen some of the fiercest recent fighting. Mr Miliband also met General David Petraeus, the American commander of Nato forces in Afghanistan, and later held talks with Afghan president Hamid Karzai in Kabul. – Mail on Sunday (more…)

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Great leader, or nearly man?

27/01/2011, 05:00:10 PM

by Rob Marchant

He has always been seen as a heavyweight and a bruiser. He has experience of the treasury at the highest level and was well-respected there. He is ferociously intelligent, one of the brightest of all his Oxford contemporaries, who, famously, does not suffer fools gladly. And, despite failing in his bid to be elected leader, there is no doubting his importance as Labour’s de facto number two, at a time of great turmoil for both the party and the economy; a politician seen as a ballast of rigour against the madder and less thought-out ideas of some of his colleagues on the left.

Raise your glasses to 93 year-old Denis Healey, the most celebrated Labour-leader-who-never-was of my lifetime. John Rentoul’s coverage of Healey’s recent Mile End group speech added a couple of insights, but the essentials of the story are well established.

Of course, there are as many differences as similarities between Healey and Ed Balls. Unlike Balls, he was not an academic economist, but a double-first classicist who, despite his on-the-job training, learned his brief well and actually made it to be chancellor. (more…)

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Ed Cojones: is he really Zorro, or is he Don Diego Vega?

25/01/2011, 07:00:31 AM

by Dan Hodges

Just when did Ed Balls become Ed Cojones? What was the time, date and place we first set eyes on the dashing, marauding, Cordobes-clad conquistador?

There are few clues in his childhood. He was born in Norfolk. Very flat, Norfolk. He attended a private, all boys school, where he reportedly enjoyed the violin. Bit girly, the violin.

At Oxford, he studied PPE, and then went on to Harvard. All very Ivy League. Finally, he came home and joined the Financial Times. Not much by way of tits, sport and Freddie Starr’s hamster at the FT.

Let’s not beat around the bush. Ed Balls has the biography of a wimp. A number-crunching, classical music-playing, pretty boy from the sticks.

Now contrast with some of the headlines from the weekend. “Ed Miliband’s rottweiler Ed Balls”; “Ed balls loves to knee cap his opponents”; “Ed Balls; aggressive, passionate, smart”.

Where did this guy spring from? How did Don Diego Vega turn into Zorro? (more…)

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Alan should return, but Ed will excel

24/01/2011, 07:00:11 AM

by John Woodcock

Much of what has been written about Alan Johnson since Thursday has read like the obituary of a man who has stepped off the political stage for good.

That need not be the case; I hope he will want to return to the front line before too long.

Commentary pondering whether Alan’s relaxed temperament made his exit inevitable is as poorly-founded as the assertion that a man who excelled as a minister for a decade could be fairly labelled gaffe-prone after a single slip.

Worse is the suggestion that his comeback is unlikely because he will be in his mid-sixties by the next election and therefore past it. It is sad that the generation of politicians which banned age discrimination and abolished the compulsory retirement age seems under pressure to be ever more fresh-faced and youthful (not that fresh-faced youth is a bad thing, you understand).

But while sad for Alan, we are all looking forward to seeing Ed Balls get stuck into George Osborne in the way he did Michael Gove.

Ed excelled in the leadership campaign for his early recognition that it was often those just above the cut off level for targeted support who were among the most disillusioned with Labour by the end of our third term in government.

We will need those instincts in the tough months ahead.

It is, of course, essential that we speak up for current and future generations of college students set to be deprived of vital financial support; that we are angry on behalf of firms who are crying out for a better skills base and can ill-afford to see young people put off from further and higher education.

But we know we must also heed the message on the doorstep from slightly better off families whose children did not generally qualify for extra help. They were cross about that, and rightly demand that we prove we are on their side too.

John Woodcock is Labour and Cooperative MP for Barrow and Furness.

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Bloomberg speech shows Balls can find what he needs in Keynes

21/01/2011, 05:55:27 PM

by Anthony Painter

Following his very well received Bloomberg speech, I cautioned back in September on Uncut against a “no retreat, no surrender” political strategy. Ed Balls is now shadow chancellor. He faces a number of challenges. One of which is how to respond to the Bloomberg speech.

Actually the speech – if followed to its logical conclusion – provides a powerful political narrative that in some ways resolves one of Labour’s current problems: how does it free itself from the perceived failures of its past?

The speech had a core argument that was anything but deficit denial. It was actually a different strategy for dealing with the deficit. Counter-intuitively, but based on completely sound Keynesian economics, Ed Balls argued that, in these circumstances, government should pursue an expansionist fiscal policy. The result will be an economy that grows more quickly and creates more jobs. The government’s counterargument is that in an open economy there are limits to the degree to which you can do this. Furthermore, they said, by May 2010 the UK was breaching those limits (there was scant evidence for this as tracking long term interest rates demonstrates; though the argument was of risk rather than immediacy). (more…)

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Friday News Review

21/01/2011, 06:56:02 AM

Good luck Alan

Alan Johnson quit frontline politics after his wife was alleged to have had an affair with his police bodyguard. And last night Scotland Yard confirmed they were carrying out an internal inquiry into the behaviour of the armed officer, from the elite SO1 close protection squad. The Met’s Department of Professional Standards was called in to probe the claims, which emerged hours after Mr Johnson resigned as shadow chancellor. The officer in question is thought to be a detective constable. He faces suspension – at the least – if bosses decide his conduct has fallen short. The bodyguard is said to have worked for him for more than a year, protecting him and his family during trips at home and abroad. Labour veteran Mr Johnson, 60, had earlier announced he was bowing out from the front bench for “personal and family reasons”. The Westminster rumour mill went into overdrive as sources revealed his 20-year marriage had broken down. Labour leader Ed Miliband described him one of the most popular figures in parliament. He said was an “outstanding colleague” who had also been “a great friend for many years”. He added that the resignation had nothing to do with Mr Johnson’s ability to do the job. In his resignation statement Mr Johnson, MP for Hull West, said: “I have decided to resign from the shadow cabinet for personal reasons to do with my family.” – Daily Mirror (more…)

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Johnson: for the life and for the leaving of it – bravo!

20/01/2011, 06:00:15 PM

Alan Johnson was too normal for the very top flight. The great paradox of his recent career is that the sense of perspective which would have made him a great leader is precisely what made him recoil from the job.

He didn’t even really want to be deputy leader. The famously common-touch polished performer was the overwhelming favourite to succeed John Prescott in 2007. But he ran a lacklustre campaign because his heart wasn’t in it and was pipped by Harriet Harman, whose heart always is.

What people like about Johnson is that he lacks the crazed ambition which is the sine qua non of top level political success. The blinkered focus. The ruthless ambition. His top-flight peers all have it, that restless lust for power that never stops. All day, every day. All night. They text you at 3 in the morning, dead sober. But obsessed. Then at five to six the phone rings and it’s them again. On a point of tiny detail. Which doesn’t matter to anyone else. But is important to them. They’re all like it. (more…)

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Johnson to resign tonight as shadow chancellor. Balls to replace him.

20/01/2011, 04:47:45 PM

Uncut has learned, from authoritative sources, that Alan Johnson will resign as shadow chancellor tonight. He will be replaced by Ed Balls.

Johnson, a former trade union leader and home secretary, was neither comfortable nor successful in the role. Dissatisfaction with his performance in the key economic brief had built in recent weeks.

In the end, Johnson has pre-empted any further adverse criticism by tendering his resignation and stepping down from the front bench.

Balls, education secretary in Gordon Brown’s government, was chief economic adviser to the treasury – a post normally held by a top civil servant – during Brown’s years as chancellor.

Pugnacious and relentless, he has taken to opposition better than any other shadow minister.

Miliband declined to appoint Balls shadow chancellor when first constructing his shadow cabinet in the autumn. Balls was neither liked nor trusted by his leader, to whom he was felt to present a threat.

This appointment is believed to signal a new accommodation between the two men.

With Balls shadowing the treasury and the more “user-friendly” Miliband in the top job, Labour is strengthened.

He is likely to be replaced as shadow home secretary by his wife, the shadow foreign secretary, Yvette Cooper. She in turn will need to be replaced in a consequent reshuffle.

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Let’s end the conspiracy of silence on immigration

20/12/2010, 12:00:23 PM

by Atul Hatwal

Shrinking violet is a term not normally associated with Ed Balls. But in the three months that he’s been shadow home secretary, something strange has happened. He’s been quiet. On one of the core issues for his brief, one of his flagship themes during the Labour leadership election – immigration – he has maintained near-trappist levels of silence.

Before Friday’s ruling that the government’s temporary cap was unlawful, he had only made one major intervention on the topic. When drawn on the government’s policy, Ed’s line was that 80% of immigration was from east European members of the EU and therefore the cap wouldn’t work. It was a good line.

Shame it wasn’t true.

The net number of people coming into the UK in 2009 from new EU member states was 5000, only 2.6% of total net arrivals last year. Just because Mrs.Duffy said it, doesn’t make it so. Ed Balls was lucky. The competition for column inches on Labour’s problems meant he got off lightly. (more…)