Ed balls

There’s been a lot said about Ed Balls’ Observer piece on immigration. But the most striking thing about it to my mind is that it shows that Balls has made the transition to an opposition mindset.   Take his proposal that ‘Europe’s leaders need to revisit the Free Movement Directive’. This is classic opposition politics; suggest something that sounds good but it practically impossible. The other EU member states are unlikely to agree to agree to renegotiating this directive. But the Tories can hardly point this out; emphasising the UK government’s impotence when it comes to changing the rules of the game would hardly go down well with the Tory

Meet Ed Balls, the candidate for Mrs Duffy. As the race for nominations closes, the Labour leadership candidates are beginning to focus on party members. With varying degrees of conviction, the contenders have identified immigration as the issue the party must address if it is to reconnect with those voters who spurned it. Ed Balls is that analysis’s most fervent advocate. He devoted an article in the Observer to the subject.  Balls argued that there has been too much migration from Eastern Europe, and it has caused economic and social ills in communities such as the one he represents. In hindsight, Britain should have accepted the transitional controls during the eastern bloc’s accession in 2004. Labour rejected

I wonder if the Labour leadership contenders worry that the previous generation’s forthcoming memoirs have created more excitement than them? I would be. The insipid campaign has laid bare the paucity of talent on Labour’s benches, and the party’s ideological exhaustion. No serving Cabinet minister lost their seat at the election; Tony Blair aside, the Milibands and Ed Balls are the best Labour has. That’s a grim prospect if your colour’s red. Ed Balls has the panache of a Vauxhall Zafira; and the two Milibands are trapped in a Beckettian whirl of meaningless jargon, convinced that using abstract nouns is a mark of vital intelligence. It isn’t; it’s irritating, and

There was a great sense of pathos after the election, when Jack Straw was the only Labour politician who could recall the shadow cabinet room’s location. It must have been surreal for those who knew only government. The loneliness of opposition would have struck at last week’s Queen’s Speech. The party must renew whilst avoiding the internecine struggle that condemned the Tories to 13 years in opposition. Fantasy politics won’t be sufficient. Introspection must yield a coherent and credible agenda, free from the undeliverable abstractions and the oscillation between arrogance and desperation that characterised the Brown government. The leadership campaign will define Labour in opposition; Hopi Sen offers the contenders

The stock response of many Coffee Housers will be ‘Who Cares?’ but surely Ed Balls will be nominated for the Labour leadership? Labour may recognise that a Balls leadership would likely end in Footian catastrophe but he will, in all certainty, proceed to the next round. Surely? Like Pete and Ben Brogan, I reckon Balls and David Miliband allowed their supporters to declare in a steady trickle, hoping to build momentum as the June 8 deadline neared. In which case it is telling that Miliband Major has changed his tactics in response to Miliband Minor’s sudden surge. David Miliband now has the backing of 48 MPs, a very significant advance

Disowning the Iraq War: that’s the task which Ed Balls and Ed Miliband have a set themselves today, as part of their continuing efforts to distinguish themselves from the Blair and Brown years.  In interview with the Telegraph, Balls says that the public were misled by “devices and tactics” over the case for war.  And, in the Guardian, Ed Miliband argues that the weapons inspectors should have been given more time, and that the conflict triggered “a catastrophic loss of trust in Labour”.  He has since claimed that he would have voted against the war at the time. Balls and Miliband are clearly trying to take advantage of the fact

A week ago, I wondered whether the Labour leadership contest might produce a “cuts candidate”: someone prepared to responsibly debate the fiscal situation as part of their campaign. But, as Danny Finkelstein has noted, none of the candidates so far has even mentioned the deficit, let alone suggested solutions for trimming it. Their wilful silence on the issue is starting to look bizarre, to say the least. The worry, though, is that it will also prove dangerous.  So long as the d-word doesn’t get a look in, Ed Balls is blissfully free to do what he does best, and bang on misleadingly about “investment vs cuts”.  He certainly seizes the

With Ed Balls and John McDonnell announcing their candidatures for the Labour leadership, it’s clear that Labour’s soul-searching period has now begun in earnest.  Speaking in front of the cameras just now, Balls reeled of the lines that he’s been priming over the past week: “listening … immigration … listening … beyond Blair and Brown,” etc.  While McDonnell was keen to separate himself from the other candidates, describing them as the “sons of Blair and the sons of Brown”. Both of them might care to read David Lammy’s appraisal of where it went wrong for Labour – and where it went right for Cameron – in tomorrow’s issue of the

While we’re on the subject of the Labour leadership, it’s worth reading James Purnell’s article in the Times today.  I know, I know – he’s left Parliament now.  But Purnell is close to Team Miliband (the Elder), so I imagine some of his thinking might show up in the campaign.  In which case… One thing that jumped out at me was Purnell’s attitude to the coalition government.  Sure, he attacks it as “only symbolically progressive,” but he doesn’t dismiss it out of hand.  Indeed, he even suggests that coalition might be a good thing: “Gently, too — we should give credit to Mr Cameron and Mr Clegg for the way

So fraternal rivalry it is, then, as Ed Miliband prepares to announce his leadership bid at a Fabian Society conference today. And, reading his interview with the Guardian, it’s clear that Ed Balls is soon going to follow suit. Two Eds, two leadership bids, and much shared rhetoric about “listening” to voters. But the similarities don’t end there. The passage where Ed Balls argues in favour of “progressive universalism” – a welfare system which stretches to the middle classes – echoes an interview that Ed Miliband gave to the Guardian in March. Both claim that it’s important to make sure tax credits and other benefits reach those higher up the

As Guido and Jim Pickard have pointed out, Liam Byrne’s article in the Guardian today reads like the launch of a leadership bid.  But if it is, then it’s not a well-judged one.  Amid some sensible points about Labour’s demise, there’s too much “if we’d have done what I said” bravado which, I imagine, won’t go down well with the party faithful right now.  A bit like pouring vinegar on an open wound. But it’s worth considering another angle to a Byrne leadership bid.  A couple of weeks ago, I wondered whether Brown’s departure would also take Labour away from the “investment vs cuts” dividing line of the past decade,

Will Straw was on the news this afternoon, arguing that Labour had lost only a small “doughnut” of seats around London and in the south. As John Rentoul notes, some doughnut: Labour was annihilated in England. David Cameron’s swift reform of the Conservative party was built on recognising the scale of defeat. Few on the Labour side have yet done so, including David Miliband, who clings to the spurious consolation that it could have been worse. In a piece for the Guardian, John Denham is candid about a share of the vote that was markedly lower than John Major’s in 1997: ‘Most obvious is just how catastrophic our defeat was.