Ed balls

The Tories should shine a light on Labour’s leadership machinations

One striking aspect to this evening’s brouhaha is how senior Labour figures are going out of their way not to endorse anyone as Gordon Brown’s successor.  Brown himself has said that he won’t back an “individual candidate,” and Peter Mandelson and Alastair Campbell have made similar noises in television interviews. There are, I imagine, two main reasons for this.  First, it’s all too soon: Labour won’t want to engage in full internecine combat while there’s still the chance of a deal with the Lib Dems.  And, second, they will want to create the impression that – contrary to Gordon Brown’s ascension to power in 2007 – the next Labour leader

How can the Lib Dems deal against the backdrop of a Labour leadership contest?

And so it begins. With Brown’s statment earlier, the Labour leadership contenders are already creeping out of of the Downing Street woodwork.  Paul Waugh tweets that David Miliband will announce his candidacy tonight.  The News of the World reports that Ed Balls has his campaign primed and ready to detonate.  And I’d be very surprised if there aren’t more names about the enter the fray. All this activity is sending electic currents through the Westminster air – and it could end up burning Labour and the Lib Dems.  Both sides are are saying that they want to create a “strong” and “stable” government.  But how can Clegg & Co. see

As the polls open, a topsy-turvy campaign closes

Now’s the time, dear CoffeeHouser. After nearly three years in Number Ten, Gordon Brown is finally subjecting himself to the wishes of the British public. And, signs are, he won’t like what they’ve got to say. Putting the strong possibility of a hung parliament aside, last night’s opinion polls had Labour on or around Michael Foot levels of support. A few folk, like Marbury, have observed that it’s almost like the campaign didn’t happen. And they’re right: there is a peculiar symmetry to the electoral calculus. After all the mood shifts of the past four weeks, we’re back broadly where we started: with the Tories looking to gain either a

Labour’s Tactical Voting Blunder

Pete asks whether Labour’s tactical voting ploy can work. My suspicion is that it cannot and will not. This is not 1997. There is all the difference in the world between voting tactically against a government and voting tactically against the idea of a government that may otherwise come to power. More generally, the advice from Ed Balls and the others that tactical voting is the smart thing to do is an admission that Labour no longer believes it can win. Given the state of the polls that’ hardly a startling conclusion but the problem, from Labour’s perspective, with conceding it publicly is that it cannot possibly motivate Labour voters

From carpet-bombing to love-bombing

Labour’s relationship with the Lib Dems gets more like Dallas’s JR and Sue Ellen with each passing day. Contemptuous and contemptible one day to lisping breathless compliments the next.  Gordon Brown snarled at Nick Clegg during last week’s debate. Clegg would, Brown argued, leap gaily into bed with the Tories on Friday morning – a departure from the previous ‘we must form a progressive coalition’ line pushed by Andrew Adonis. This morning brings another volte face: Brown and several cabinet ministers urge ‘progressives’ to vote tactically. Writing in the Guardian, Gordon Brown pitches for Lib Dems to vote Labour in 100 Tory/Labour marginals. Peter Hain insists that votes are cast

Balls falling behind in the Labour leadership race

We are, in all likelihood, only days away from a full-blown, out-in-the-open Labour leadership contest.  In which case, the odds that Ladbrokes have just fired out are worth a passing glance.  Underneath the news that the Tories are now odds-on to form a majority government, they’ve got this list: Next permanent Labour leader David Miliband 7/4 Ed Miliband 5/1 Alan Johnson 6/1 Harriet Harman 8/1 Peter Mandelson 10/1 Alistair Darling 12/1 Ed Balls 14/1 Jon Cruddas 14/1 Jack Straw 25/1 John Denham 25/1 Andy Burnham 25/1 Hilary Benn 33/1 Yvette Cooper 33/1 The thing that strikes me is Ed Balls’s relatively low position – behind both Alistair Darling and Peter

Darling socks it to Balls

The election is six days away, Labour civil war is seven days away. And Alistair Darling has today delivered a rather nice put-down to Ed Balls for BBC Campaign Straight Talk. Here is his conversation earlier today with Andrew Neil: Andrew Neil: Has Mr Brown given you any indication that you’d stay as Chancellor if he wins? Alistair Darling: Yes he has, and I would. AN: You would? AD: Yes. AN: And you’d be happy to do so? AD: Very happy. AN: So Ed Balls should not be packing his bags to move into Number 11? AD: I don’t think Ed has got any intention of doing that. AN: Well

Labour’s disintegrating campaign

Fireworks at Labour’s press conference this morning, thanks to some brilliant questioning of Mandelson and Balls about the cuts which Labour is concealing from the public. A while ago, the FT did its own version of a table that Coffee House ran in February: the implied cuts that departments will make under HM Treasury forecasts. I reprint it below. The IFS has sought to quantify these cuts. So Sky’s Adam Boulton read out this list and confronted Mandelson: which of these would Labour not do? Freezing benefits? Cutting public sector pay? Halving the spend on teaching assistants? Cutting funding to Wales and Scotland? Nick Robinson from the BBC piled in

Labour’s Catch 22

The sole current political certainty is that Nick Clegg will not prop-up Gordon Brown. Clegg holds Brown personally responsible for 13 years of failure and not even political marriages can be built on enmity.  Labour’s choice is clear: remove Brown to accommodate Clegg. The Sunday Times reports plots are afoot to kill Gordon ‘with dignity’. But euthanasia is messy. Two options are being discussed. First, Brown would be given a year to make a final indelible mark on Britain before shipping himself off to Westminster’s version of Dignitas. I think we can all see the problem with that cunning scheme, and Nick Clegg certainly will.  The second option is to

How Whelan & Co. exploit Britain’s libel laws

The Charlie Whelan problem is intensifying for Labour, with more revelations in the Mail on Sunday today taking on from our cover story in this week’s magazine. Whelan’s behaviour may be no worse than that of Ed Balls and Gordon Brown – but he is more careless. Like McBride, he was actually caught: and his tactics documented in a formal seven-page report. Not the sort of document you want surfacing during a campaign. So it’s little wonder why Whelan used Carter-Ruck to try and deter The Spectator from any further investigation in the bullying case: it threatens to expose Gordon Brown’s entire modus operandi and the methods which he uses

How Charlie Whelan killed New Labour

Last summer, The Spectator received a letter from Charlie Whelan’s solicitors complaining about this post – where we mention their client’s spot of bother with his colleagues at Unite. Carter-Ruck were instructed on one of the no-win-no-fee deals: it cost Whelan nothing to sue, but could cost us £thousands to defend. So the lawyer’s letter is, by itself, an effective form of intimidation. A magazine with a small budget obviously faces huge pressure to do what he wanted: apologise, pay up and (suspiciously) undertake not to pursue the story any further. Under the circumstances, The Spectator could do only one thing. Our full investigation into Charlie Whelan is the cover story of tomorrow’s magazine

Will Labour’s manifesto mean the end of VAT attacks on the Tories?

You know it’s the day you’ve all been waiting for, CoffeeHousers – the day of Labour’s manifesto launch.  Last Thursday, Douglas Alexander described the document as a “progressive programme worthy of these testing times”.  So, well, it must be good, mustn’t it? Problem is, this manifesto risks going the same way as the Budget.  So much of it has been so heavily trailed, that there’s a danger we’ve already heard it all – and that it will be met with weary indifference by the media and the public alike.   Votes for 16 year olds; jobs or training for unemployed under-25s; a referendum on an alternative vote system; a pledge

How Labour and the Lib Dems are attacking the Tories’ marriage tax break

This morning, we’ve already seen the two primary attacks which will be used against the marriage tax break outlined by George Osborne in the Times today.  The first came courtesy of Vince Cable, who said it represents a “derisory” sum of £3 a week for those who benefit from it.  And the second was from Ed Balls – who else? – who labelled the policy as “discriminatory,” because it doesn’t cover every married person, and nor does it account for couples who split.  Or as he rather suggestively put it: “if your husband beats you up and leaves you you get no support.” One thing worth noting is how the

The true cost of Brown’s debt binge

When Alistair Daring admitted last week that there would indeed be job losses arising from the proposed National Insurance hike, it would have struck Gordon Brown and Ed Balls like root canal surgery. This blows wide open the main part of Brown’s election deceit: asking the public to look at the advantages of the borrowing, and not contemplate the flip side to the debt coin. Not to ask where the repayments will come from, or the impact of those repayments on the jobs of the future. No wonder Darling is today being made to claim the opposite. The grim truth is that every job “protected” now, due to debt, will

A bad news day for Labour, as the Tories get positive

Oh dear.  Today’s frontpages form the most eclectic set of damaging headlines for Labour for quite some time.  On the front of the Mail and the Times: allegations that the government – specifically, Ed Balls – “interfered” with a report on the Baby P tragedy.  On the Independent: a claim that Brown “misled” the public over waiving VAT on a charity single for Haiti.  And on the Telegraph: news that more business leaders have backed the Tories’ national insurance policy.  Even the Guardian wades in with the headline: “Labour and business fall out”. Of these, the first story is potentially the biggest scandal.  But it’s the latter two which more

How Brown would get Darling out of the Treasury

After reading Brown’s claims in the Guardian today, this Kill A Minister mechanism in his speech today rather jumped out at me: “I will set out a clear and public annual contract for each new Cabinet Minister, detailing what I expect them and their department to deliver to the British people, and that their continued appointment is dependent on their delivery just as it would be in a business or any other organisation.” I mean, you can just imagine what Alistair Darling’s first “contract” would look like: You, the Chancellor, will undertake to deliver the following to the British people: i) Economic growth of 5 percent in 2010-11 ii) A

Labour’s spending cuts exposed

Darling has now exposed as false the Brown/Balls dividing line of “investment vs cuts”. If Labour were to win, he said, the cuts would be worse than anything seen under Thatcher in the 1980s. This is Darling’s problem: he’s a dreadful liar. The IFS today laid out the scale of the cuts that would happen whoever wins the election, and the below graph is worth reprinting. Overall spending falls 12 percent (once dole and debt interest are taken into account). So when Darling says this is worse than anything in the 1980s, he is simply stating a fact. You’d never catch Balls or Brown doing that, by the way, and

The two sides of Alistair Darling

After delivering an insipid, insufficient Budget yesterday, Alistair Darling has now smuggled a little bit of honesty into the fiscal debate.  In interview with Nick Robinson, he has claimed that if Labour is re-elected its spending cuts “will be deeper and tougher” than Thatcher’s.  Needless to say, that’s a message which will not sit well with his Cabinet colleagues like Ed “investment vs cuts” Balls. And this is precisely why Darling is such a confusing figure.  Yes, he deserves some praise for being more upfront about the public finances than his predecessor ever could be, and for restricting the wilder excesses of Brown and Balls.  But it’s hard to forget

Darling and Brown get away with it

Strange days, indeed.  While most of the frontpages today are unflattering for Labour – particularly, and unsurprisingly, those of the Telegraph and the Sun – I imagine that Brown & Co. will be quite pleased with the general tone of the Budget coverage.  Much of it mirrors the Independent’s view that Darling “played a weak hand well”.  Or, elsewhere, there’s a kind of detached indifference about what is described as a “boring” Budget. Yes, if you like, you can take that as proof that the Darling-and-Mandelson approach to the public finances is less politically toxic, and a good degree more sensible, than the Balls-and-Brown approach.  But, to my mind, it