Ed Balls is still fighting the war against Blair

The illusion of unity is just about holding up in Manchester. Both Alan Milburn and Peter Mandelson stayed away—much to the disappointment of us hacks—from the Progress rally last night despite being listed as speakers, and most attacks on Brown have been in code. All of this makes Ed Balls’ attack on Tony Blair at the Fabian Society Question Time all the more bizarre.

The events had gone much as expected. The final question to the stellar panel—including Fraser Nelson of this parish, Jon Cruddas, Sunder Katwala and Zoe Williams, and superbly chaired by Gaby Hinsliff of The Observer—was about the role of the party in making policy, fairly innocuous stuff. Cruddas answered with a few gags about the division of the ‘80s and then Balls launched into an unprovoked attack on Blair. Balls claimed that in the ‘80s Blair had favoured taking the right to pick a candidate away from local parties and giving it some group of party wise-men. He went onto say that one member one voter passed in spite of - not because of - people like Tony.

Now, I’m not qualified to discuss the merits of Balls’s argument. But at the time when the Labour party is desperately trying to keep a lid on division it seems rather counter-productive, to say the least, of Balls to go after Blair like this. The only explanation I can come up with is that Fraser’s arguments so rattled him that by the time it came to the last question Balls wasn’t thinking straight. Meanwhile, the heir to Blair continues to cruise along unscrutinised and is heading for a three-figure majority. Update: Sunder Katwala of the Fabians, and who was on the panel last night, emails to say that while Balls did say Tony Blair he must have meant Tony Benn as the Campaign for Labour Democracy was a Bennite vehicle.