Ed balls

Leaders debates are on: officially

Westminster Christmas party season is in full swing. Half the Cabinet dropped by the Sky News bash at the Intercontinental last night. Mick Hucknall was also there, which was odd. The big news of the evening came when the head of Sky News, Jon Riley, confirmed that all three party leaders have now officially agreed to TV debates at the next election. Details were sparse because there appears to be deadlock over formats, timings and even the number of debates. The debates are on, though. Officially. In some form. It was a busy old evening for political-ornithologists. Tim Yeo lurked in the corner, looking glum. Chris Bryant refused to ‘twerk’ with

Naked politicians and the Emperor’s New Clothes: Labour’s Autumn Statement challenge

The Autumn Statement isn’t until Thursday, but already it’s clear what the attack lines will be from both sides. As James explained earlier, the Tories and Lib Dems will want to focus on the ‘responsible recovery’, which means fewer giveaways than a Chancellor might be tempted to make at this stage in a parliament and which feeds into the Conservative narrative that voters should let them finish the job by re-electing them in 2015. From Labour’s part, it’s that this Autumn Statement was written by Ed Miliband at his party’s conference in Brighton. Labour MPs are now very keen to talk about Coalition politicians dancing to Labour’s tune. Meanwhile, Ed

James Forsyth

Osborne wants to talk about ‘the responsible recovery’ but energy bills are still Topic A

In the minds of government strategists, the autumn statement is the moment when the coalition gets to turn the conversation back to the broader economy and away from Ed Miliband’s focus on the cost of living. But the first five minutes of George Osborne’s pre-statement interview with Andrew Marr were dominated by the action the government is taking in response to Miliband’s pledge to freeze energy bills. The problem for the coalition on energy bills is that the £50 it is taking off bills now might well not be enough to stop bills rising next year. If household bills go up again in 2014, Miliband’s price freeze is going to

PMQs sketch: Hashtag ‘Green Crap’

Loan sharks got a biff on the nose at PMQs today. Cameron wants to cap the sum that each of us can borrow. Ed Miliband was puzzled. This is a U-turn, he said. When he proposed to cap energy bills Cameron called it ‘Marxism.’ Cameron shrugged this off. And he gloatingly invited Miliband to ‘congratulate us’ for pushing through an important reform. Tricky for Ed. When the government filches your idea, you can’t complain without seeming to oppose your own position. Miliband moved to the looming winter crisis which he seems to be looking forward to. Last year an additional 31,000 deaths were recorded. All the PM’s fault, apparently. ‘Any

How the warring ghosts of Blair and Brown still haunt their successors

Six and a half years after Gordon Brown finally badgered Tony Blair out of Downing Street, the relationship between these two men still dominates British politics. Why? Because David Cameron and George Osborne, and Ed Miliband and Ed Balls are, in their different ways, doing what they can to prevent history repeating itself. Their relationships are both informed by the Blair-Brown breakdown. Cameron and Osborne have quite deliberately structured their working lives to avoid replicating the tensions within New Labour. The pair shared a set of offices in opposition with their aides sitting in the same room. This was meant to prevent the emergence of two separate, competing power centres.

Osborne increases debt more than Labour did over 13 years

The national debt figures are out – £1.2 trillion and rising – and although I hate to say it, the Labour Party has a valid point to make. If you don’t adjust for inflation, Osborne has borrowed more in under four years than the Labour Party borrowed over 13 years. It’s unusual for Ed Balls to talk about debt accumulation as a bad thing, perhaps because his policy remains the accumulation of even more debt. But here’s the story so far:- Labour is, as ever, spinning too much. As they know, you need to adjust for inflation to make any meaningful comparison in public spending. But the overall point holds.

Nightmare at PMQs!

It started as soon as Ed Miliband stood up at PMQs today. ‘Nightmare!’ yelled the Tories. ‘Nightmare!’ They’d been fired up by the first question from Steve Brine, who craftily double-loaded his query. He referenced the Co-op bank and the ‘nightmare email’ in one sentence. Would the PM respond, he asked, ‘to grave concerns about the nightmare unfolding at the Co-operative?’ Cameron pretended to be all serious. He fretted about the regulatory controls and about safeguarding the bank without fleecing the tax-payer. ‘Nightmare!’ goaded the Tories. Ed Balls, seated beside Miliband, flushed puce. Not a natural Trappist, the shadow chancellor is clearly under orders to shut his gob during PMQs.

Gavin Shuker: ‘I’m just one of life’s winners, I suppose’

Congratulations to Labour’s Gavin Shuker for some spectacular brown nosing. The Luton MP has thrilled readers of his blog with an account of him playing the ‘Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?’ boardgame. It’s a riveting read: ‘I worked my way through all fifteen questions effortlessly, and nailed that £1 million – much to the annoyance of everyone else playing. But then again, they should have seen it coming. It really helps when your phone a friend can feature Ed Balls on economics, Douglas Alexander on geography, and Andy Burnham on the NHS.’ He concludes that he’s ‘one of life’s winners’. Pass the sick bucket.

Ed Miliband and Balls: still split on HS2

More details of the split Eds have emerged. As Guido reports, Balls has never been to the pub with Miliband, nor knows ‘if he likes the pub or not’. And, in her Times column today (£), Rachel Sylvester reveals that High Speed 2 is another diving line between Labour’s big beasts: ‘There is clear disagreement over HS2 — although Mr Balls’ conference speech, in which he raised concerns about the cost, was approved by Mr Miliband, there was irritation in the leader’s office about the briefing afterwards that emphasised the Shadow Chancellor’s skepticism about the high-speed line.’ After Balls’s conference speech, Brighton was aflutter with rumours that Labour was going

What the Ed Balls is a ‘nightmare’ emails tell us

It has long been suspected that there are tensions between Ed Miliband and Ed Balls. The pair fell out badly over the third runway at Heathrow in government and when Miliband was elected leader, he conspicuously didn’t offer Balls the job of shadow Chancellor. But since Balls became shadow Chancellor the pair has largely succeeded in keeping their differences under wraps. But the leaked emails revealed by Simon Walters in the Mail on Sunday today, show what Miliband’s team privately thinks of Balls. Torsten Bell, one of Miliband’s most influential aides, calls Balls a ‘nightmare’ and complains about how complicated his message on the economy is. Tellingly, he isn’t rebuked

Help to Buy mortgage subsidies show how little politicians learnt from the bubble years

Gordon Brown used to joke that there are only two types of Chancellors: ‘those who fail and those who get out in time.’ Inside this joke lay his strategy: he was stoking a debt-fuelled bubble that was going to burst, but he hoped it would do so after the election or on someone else’s watch. It’s the textbook definition of putting party over country. I’m afraid that we can see its reflection in Help to Buy. David Cameron’s article in the Sun today shows this politicking is back. Look, he said, this policy shows I’m on the side of aspirational voters. If you want to get on in life, the

Ed Balls’ credibility mission

The never-ending slew of messages from Labour figures about the party’s ‘clear’ position on high-speed rail was part of an attempt by the party to show that it is a credible opposition that scrutinises policies rather than blindly supports them. But this got rather confusing last week as each ‘clear position’ was a little different to the last. So today Ed Balls tried to set out Labour’s clear position more clearly when he spoke to the CBI conference. And it turns out that this position is the same as it was at the party’s conference. Here is the section on the new line in the Shadow Chancellor’s speech: ‘Labour supports

High-speed fail

A year ago the electoral strategies of the two main parties seemed set. The Conservatives would stand as the party of prudence, claiming to have saved Britain from a Greek-style meltdown through austerity measures which, though painful at the time, had eventually borne fruit in the shape of a private sector-led recovery. Labour, meanwhile, would stand as the party for public investment, promising to repair what it saw as the damage wrought by cuts. Since then, things have got better for the Tories than they could have imagined. Not only did a threatened triple-dip recession fail to materialise, but revisions to economic data concluded that Britain did not even suffer a

PMQs: A rather grumpy, unedifying session

Talking about energy bills week in, week out might be good politics for both parties, but it sure does make for a grumpy PMQs session. David Cameron was still rather ratty this week, but he managed some better attacks on Miliband than he’s done in the past few weeks of the great energy debate. He tried to pin the blame for the current state of the energy market on Miliband, saying: ‘Who gave us the Big Six? Yes, when Labour first looked at this, there were almost 20, but because of his stewardship we’ve ended up with six players.’ He also accused the party of pushing for yet more price

The government tries to ‘smoke Labour out’ on HS2

The government’s approach to the HS2 debate has changed. Up until recently, government sources would wave away the suggestion that Labour might withdraw its support for the project. They’d point to Andrew Adonis and his influence on Ed Miliband to explain why Ed Balls’s doubts about it didn’t matter that much. But this has now changed. They’ve now decided, in the words of one Number 10 figure, that they need to ‘smoke Labour out on the issue’. Over the next few weeks, we’ll see the Tories trying to put more and more pressure on Labour to say whether or not they’ll back it. Number 10 is acutely aware that, at

Who feels grumpier about the recovery?

The Tories were expecting Ed Balls to be a little grumpy today after the ONS’ latest figures showed the economy was growing at its fastest rate in three years. And the Shadow Chancellor didn’t sound his cheeriest when he popped up to respond. In his official response, Balls said: ‘After three damaging years of flatlining, it’s both welcome and long overdue that our economy is growing again. But for millions of people across the country still seeing prices rising faster than their wages this is no recovery at all.’ And on the World at One, he said: ‘For people who are seeing their living standards falling, being told that somehow

Andrew Adonis interview: HS2, free schools and running for Mayor of London

Newcastle upon Tyne Andrew Adonis is not your conventional ‘retired’ politician. The sprightly 50-year-old shadow infrastructure minister remains more influential than his current job title suggests. After running Tony Blair’s policy unit at No. 10, Adonis kick-started the academies programme and paved the way for Michael Gove’s education revolution. Under Gordon Brown he rose to Secretary of State for Transport, where he renationalised the East Coast railway and conceived High Speed 2. Adonis took a central role in Labour’s failed coalition negotiations with the Lib Dems (a party he was once a candidate for) before quitting frontline politics. Today, Adonis is more instrumental to Labour than ever, leading Ed Miliband’s

PMQs sketch: Ed Balls leaves them wanting more

Here’s a favourite Tory joke. Question: What does ‘BBC’ stand for? Answer: Buggers Broadcasting Communism. David Cameron seemed tempted to try this gag at PMQs today. He mentioned the Beeb four times in sardonic asides. ‘Let’s praise the BBC for once,’ he said, bitingly. He woke this morning, he said, to a BBC report stating that public satisfaction with council services had risen despite the cuts. ‘I thought I’d died and gone to heaven.’ He berated Ed Miliband for wanting to introduce new decarbonisation targets. ‘Even the BBC doesn’t agree with that.’ And he attacked Milband’s promise to freeze energy bills as evidence that ‘he’d like to live in a

Tory ‘stick with us’ message boosted by IMF

Poor old Ed Balls. He’s been making predictions of doom that now appear to have gone too far and too fast. The latest blow to the Shadow Chancellor is that the IMF, which he went through a period of definitely liking a lot when its lieutenants started suggesting that austerity was ‘playing with fire’, has upgraded its growth forecasts for the UK by more than any other major economy. This map from the organisation’s latest World Economic Outlook illustrates rather neatly how well the IMF expects the UK to do in comparison to other European economies. Obviously this doesn’t mean that everything is fine and dandy and that everyone in the UK can