Byrne backs Balls
Fraser Nelson 6:54pm
My, how Balls is rattled. He has made Liam Byrne throw his body in front of the bullets with a statement declaring that he co-chairs those Wednesday afternoon attack meetings. Not that he'd regard them as such. Here are his words, with my thoughts:
LB: “The Sunday Times' write-up of the weekly meetings I co-chair with Ed is not only inaccurate, it’s nonsensical and pretty offensive."
LB: “In the all the months I've worked closely with Ed, I've only ever seen him totally, professionally, focused on helping build a better country."FN: The many other details the No.10 whistleblower provided are accurate, we presume. And seeing as the nature of these meetings are so contested by No.10, what about releasing a list of attendees and isues discussed to lay the matter at rest?
LB: "He is a first-rate colleague to work with, he’s superb at his job, and that's why the Opposition fear him."FN: Which he defines as one where the corpses of Brown's enemies are strewn over Westminster, as a grateful nation prepares to welcome its new, blinky-eyed leader.
LB: “Frankly media gossip and invention like this story..."FN: The Sunday Times story was sourced not to the Tories but those in government appalled by the way Brown tried to disown McBride.
LB: "...is simply not going to blur our total, unremitting and unrelenting focus on fighting back for Britain against the worst global downturn for generations."FN: Not media gossip, but highly credible and directly quoted concerns about Balls from a No10 insider.
FN: That fightback is going well so far, eh? The UK budgetary crisis, of course, has its roots in the uk's failure to pay down debt in the good years. Due to a calamitous new set of economic "golden rules" written by, oh, Ed Balls. And the banking collapse is due to the abject failure of the fractured regulatory system written in a suite of the Grosvenor Hotel by Brown and, erm, Balls. In fact, many of the woes in next week's Budget can be traced to that famous, unrelenting focus of an over-confident Balls.
Previous
AndyLeeds
April 19th, 2009 7:25pm Report this commentLOL. Good one Fraser.
Henry Rogers
April 19th, 2009 8:09pm Report this commentDoes Byrne really not get it? Does he really want to go down with the ship, after all that's only expected of the Captain. So why should a minion, several rungs down, risk all to no purpose. Is he perhaps a True Believer then? They're all crazy, completely crazy. It's like a religious cult preparing for mass suicide.
Chuck Unsworth
April 19th, 2009 8:09pm Report this commentByrne - the useful idiot. None of the above exonerates Balls, it's simply Byrne trotting out a series of platitudes. If the Sunday Times story is untrue let him sue - just as Watson apparently wishes to do. Just get the writs out, eh?
David
April 19th, 2009 8:11pm Report this comment"...he’s superb at his job, and that's why the Opposition fear him."
I now love Liam Byrne. Nobody else could make a statement that funny while keeping a straight face.
Tim Harper
April 19th, 2009 8:33pm Report this commentCue a week of jokes about Brown and his Balls being rattled...
Death or Tory
April 19th, 2009 8:41pm Report this commentOh, give me strength...
Liam Byrne was always a useful idiot (and not always that useful, either).
On a more cogent note, a whisper among the 'Lunchtime O'Booze' crowd at The Red Lion in Whitehall has it that Balls is 'totally pi**ing himself' at the potential this has to hole his Leadership ambitions below the waterline.
Bless...
Liz Brown
April 19th, 2009 9:09pm Report this commentLiam Byrne is an expert on zanulab speak and will try to convince that black is white and equally adept at changing the subject..........
Occasional Ostrich
April 19th, 2009 9:10pm Report this commentIs this suggesting that Balls lacks cojones?
Mitch
April 19th, 2009 9:15pm Report this commentOh so no story here then ?? Oh that bloke hahaha he is as useless as balls and is just being thrown out of the bunker like a sub human shield.
sorry ed but we want you doing the perp walk or the Tyburn jig.
George Laird
April 19th, 2009 9:20pm Report this commentDear All
Liam Byrne has entered the fray in an attempt to defuse the growing scandal of smeargate, now it has reached Ed Balls.
Byrne tells us of Balls;
"He is a first-rate colleague to work with, he’s superb at his job".
What does that have to do with the price of tea in China?
Nothing.
If Byrne thinks that stepping in is useful, it was an error of judgement rather like Toby Young's intervention on Draper.
It is interesting that Byrne keeps to the already rehearsed New Labour script of recession to justify moving on.
"is simply not going to blur our total, unremitting and unrelenting focus on fighting back for Britain against the worst global downturn for generations."
That was Bryne's mistake; he should have went off key with his message because it looks like a sterotypical plant.
The great pity for Byrne is that he has used up his one chance to make an impact due to his and presumably spin doctor assisted error.
It looks as Fraser describes it;
"He has made Liam Byrne throw his body in front of the bullets".
Pathetic and given the amount of money they spend on spin, incompetent.
Yours sincerely
George Laird
The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University
Ivy Eileen
April 19th, 2009 9:39pm Report this commentGrubby stuff - " [it's] not only inaccurate, it’s nonsensical and pretty offensive." -
O.K., you didn't like it (it's "pretty offensive"), the balance may not be what you would have liked (it's "nonsensical") BUT you don't deny the substantive truth of it (it's "inaccurate").
Frankly, it is ridiculous of us to focus on words and to scrutinise them like this .... but this shower have lived and breathed for years on gulling us with words and high-flown phrases that never match the reality (as witness Mathew Pariss's artice in last Saturday's The Times), so we are obliged to scrutinise what they say..... and, more importantly, what they are not saying and NOT focussing on. It's a liguistic conjuring trick with these guys.
@ Tim Harper - nice one !
Bob
April 19th, 2009 9:47pm Report this commentNew Spin, New Lies, Same OLD Labour.
Labour, now both financially and morally bankrupt
AndyLeeds
April 19th, 2009 9:54pm Report this commentI've not read that Watson has issued any writs; merely that he paid Carter Ruck to write a letter, at vast cost which he will probably claim on his expenses. I wish one of the swines would sue and then there could be a discovery of their in and sent boxes which would make very interesting reading indeed.
Silent Hunter
April 19th, 2009 9:58pm Report this commentWell that's 2 weeks on and still no sign of Smeargate ending.
G R E A T ! :o)
David Smith
April 19th, 2009 10:14pm Report this comment"not directly quoted" at all. But comments from an unnamed "source" in a paper with a letters paged crammed with apologies every week for the inaccurate guff they run all the time. The news pages of the Sunday Times are seen as little more than a comic by the rest of Fleet Street.
john miller
April 19th, 2009 10:29pm Report this commentLooking at the photo I thought: "That'd make a good caption competition".
Then I read the headline again and realised the sub-ed at the Coffee House would probably win it anyway.
Moraymint
April 19th, 2009 10:43pm Report this commentWhat an absolute bloody joke! This is getting beyond parody. Blair, Brown, Campbell, Balls, McBride ... all of them ... complete and utter tossers (funded by punch drunk taxpayers like us Coffee Housers).
They've damned-near ruined this country and now they're fighting for their sordid little lives. Hey, I'm enjoying watching these rats drown, slowly. Keep up the pressure chaps. This could well be the end of the madness that has been dismal, incompetent Labour rule for the past decade.
Funny (not) how a Labour Government always ends up like this? Only this time, Mr Gordon Brown (our Dear Leader, unelected by his Party, unelected by the nation) has presided over the mother-of-all socio-economic disasters. It's faintly amusing to think that Brown's time in politics will go down in history as how NOT to be a politician. Brown so desparately wanted to lead this fine nation ... and in so doing made a desparate, unremitting, world-class mess of it. He was always unworthy of the good citizens of this country; that's why he never put himself or his bonkers ideas to the test of the British people.
This is what happens if you seize power in a free-press democracy; eventually you get found out for the incompetent plonker that you are.
Good riddance Brown; I'm delighted to think that you'll be famous for failing spectacularly. The justifiable end for a simple cheat.
Pete, Scotland
April 19th, 2009 10:50pm Report this commentByrne, What a career arse licker!
Carrie
April 19th, 2009 11:09pm Report this commentFraser, why do you hate Balls so much? It's obvious the opposition fear him the most as the next Labour Leader, that's why the right are going in hard this weekend trying to discredit him.
Balls supporter
April 19th, 2009 11:09pm Report this commentI actually like Ed Balls. He is the future of Labour in my opinion. Lay off him.
Balls for Leader of the LABOUR PARTY
April 19th, 2009 11:11pm Report this commentI can't believe the amount of hatred being pured on Ed Balls this weekend from the right and their press. What's up has he got you running scared?
Terry Mc
April 19th, 2009 11:13pm Report this commentEd would wipe the floor with David Cameron. Ed and Yvette are a nice normal hard working couple who have got where they are through hard work and intelligence, unlike privelledged Toffs Cameron and Osborne. With regards to your headline Fraser I think it's Balls who has got the right rattled.
JohnAnt
April 19th, 2009 11:20pm Report this commentByrne is a minister. If he can be shown to have had even a sniff of glimpse of the emails, he's finished - and so is Brown.
JohnAnt
April 19th, 2009 11:21pm Report this comment"sniff of a glimpse", sorry.
David Ossitt
April 19th, 2009 11:31pm Report this comment"I've only ever seen him totally, professionally, focused on helping build a better country"
With whose permission is he helping build this better country? Who asked him to?
Not ours, not us!
He has not the skill to open a box of Lego and he thinks he could be a Prime Minister, the man is deluded.
Hawkeye
April 19th, 2009 11:34pm Report this commentWhen I first read the title of this piece I thought it said Byrne lacks Balls
Freudian slip, no doubt....
Pat
April 19th, 2009 11:53pm Report this commentEd and Yvette are a hard working
couple on £500k a year who were never parachuted into safe Labour Seats and who have never claimed excess expenses.
Plus Ed has absolutely no knowledge of 'Mr McBride' and never saw anything untoward during the many years they worked together in the Treasury.
He also never ever went drinking with 'Mr McBride' and never 'did' karaoke with him.
And Ed is not really really very fond of Gordon Brown and is, as we speak, not in the least bit worried that any smears will stick to him.
Ed Balls...one blink and he's forgotten everything.
Mitch
April 20th, 2009 5:13am Report this commentDont forget eds "job" at the Smith Institute where he was given 100k to write a few pamphlets and wait for a safe seat to become available.
He would make a great labour leader after they lose,he would lead them to oblivion Im just scared that the damage he has done to education could be wrought upon the whole nation.
Death or Tory
April 20th, 2009 8:40am Report this commentMy, my - Dolly's last remaining 'Verlorene Kinder' appear to be mounting a rear-guard action to support Balls - how apt...
Susan Hill
April 20th, 2009 10:25am Report this commentLitmus test. When he`s lost his seat would you give Ballsup a real proper job ?
The Huntsman
April 20th, 2009 10:47am Report this commentOver a space of four minutes yesterday we had this little flurry:
"Carrie
April 19th, 2009 11:09pm
Fraser, why do you hate Balls so much? It's obvious the opposition fear him the most as the next Labour Leader, that's why the right are going in hard this weekend trying to discredit him.
Balls supporter
April 19th, 2009 11:09pm
I actually like Ed Balls. He is the future of Labour in my opinion. Lay off him.
Balls for Leader of the LABOUR PARTY
April 19th, 2009 11:11pm
I can't believe the amount of hatred being pured on Ed Balls this weekend from the right and their press. What's up has he got you running scared?
Terry Mc
April 19th, 2009 11:13pm
Ed would wipe the floor with David Cameron. Ed and Yvette are a nice normal hard working couple who have got where they are through hard work and intelligence, unlike privelledged Toffs Cameron and Osborne. With regards to your headline Fraser I think it's Balls who has got the right rattled."
How very odd that four Bollocks should be online at the same moment and keen to share with us their heartfelt support for Mr. Balls (and, in one instance, Mrs. Balls).
Do you perhaps have the IP addresses of these four...bet they are the same.
Whatever be the case, one may take heart that they 'don't like it up 'em!"
Mike Wood
April 20th, 2009 11:38am Report this commentOf course Liam Byrne has been close to Tom Watson for a long time. They were on the National Organisation of Labour Students' national executive in the early 1990s before working together on the 1997 campaign.
Tom was then Liam's campaign manager in the 2004 Hodge Hill byelection, where there were a number of allegations that the Labour campaign was veering the wrong side of acceptable in the way that it was attacking the Lib Dem candidate.
Perhaps it wasn't Balls who persuaded Byrne to put himself on the line.
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