Balls dumps Brown into another lose-lose situation
Peter Hoskin 9:10am
Things never seem to go smoothly for Gordon. On a day when the Telegraph carries details of his Whitehall savings programme, the FT has news that one of his closest allies, Ed Balls, is calling for relatively hefty spending increases elsewhere. Apparently, Balls has asked the Treasury to grant his department – the Department for Children, Schools and Families – real-terms spending increases of 1.4 percent until 2014. That's an extra £2.6 billion in total – and goes beyond previous Labour commitments to "protect" schools spending.
It's a brassy move by Balls and one which is sure to aggravate his colleagues. After all, remember when Labour called Cameron "Mr 10 percent" because the Tory decision to protect health spending implied 20 percent cuts to other budgets? Well, according to the FT, Balls's impromptu request would mean 12 percent cuts for other departments - rising to 20 percent if Labour also protects health spending.
They're numbers which create all sorts of internal problems for Brown. Does he back Balls's request, and risk the anger of his Cabinet (as well as undermining deficit-reduction plans)? Or does he block Balls's request, and risk the anger of one of his dwindling band of allies (as well as losing what you suspect, to him, will be a tempting investment vs cuts attack to deploy against Tories)? It's a tricky situation - and one which has been worsened by the story going public.
In the end, it's hard not to see this as leadership positioning on Balls's part. Deep down, he must know it's unlikely that he'll get the chance to spend the 2011-2014 schools budget anyway – so this is mostly about striding the post-election landscape as The Man Who Saved Schools From Cuts (until the nasty Tories got in). A pity for him, then, that the Tories' agenda for schools is their most impressive and comprehensive policy area.
UPDATE: The Standard reports that Darling is resisting Balls's request, and that the Treasury are "perplexed" at the timing of it..
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Sally Chatterjee
November 17th, 2009 9:17am Report this commentBalls is still trapped in the reductive mindset that outcomes are defined by spending. There's a correlation but we're seeing more and more evidence that Labour's spending boom was unsustainable, the boasts loook hollow and the results were illusionary. For all the talk of giant budgets, so many children are still struggling to get five GCSEs. It's not always about cash.
Yam Yam
November 17th, 2009 9:19am Report this commentDoesn't the New Labour glitterati have a delightful attitude towards public money. No wonder we're facing a £1,300,000,000,000 public sector deficit by 2011!
Chris lancashire
November 17th, 2009 9:22am Report this commentThis economic moron is more interested in playing politics than addressing the most pressing issue facing the nation.
This, remember, from the man who responded "So what?" to pleas to reduce spending months before the full crisis was revealed.
Apart from showing he is completely unfit for office this demonstrates that Balls is interested in one thing - Balls.
Fortunately he has got it wrong again.
Andy Leeds
November 17th, 2009 9:26am Report this commentWho cares ? Long as this miserable shower are at each others throats that's fine.
Liz Brown
November 17th, 2009 9:50am Report this commentBalls by name, balls by nature
Norman Dee
November 17th, 2009 10:11am Report this commentBalls is the perfect nuliebour MP, originally employed as "Liar in Chief" to the Treasury, then parachuted into a safe seat, promoted out of turn based on his knowledge of where the bodies are buried no doubt, and now lobbying against the man who made it all possible for him. The nub of the problem is that Balls probably now thinks this is the norm for a politician, and although it's somewhat true in some cases I don't really believe they are all as bad as him.
john miller
November 17th, 2009 10:11am Report this commentAll statements made by Labourites from now on are purely for political consumption. They have no basis in the real world whatsoever.
Stepney
November 17th, 2009 10:15am Report this commentThe opening salvo in the up and coming post-election war.
The Treasury is absolutely fuming I hear, which, if there was a God, would lead to the marvelous headline:
Darling Slaps Away Balls.
(I'm hear all week, tip your waitresses.)
Frizby
November 17th, 2009 10:25am Report this commentEd Balls... yes, give him the party leadership. Tell him to take with him when we load him onto a 3 man dinghy with the rest of his foolish colleagues and push them off the west coast into the Atlantic swell.
Damn fool by name and by nature.
toco
November 17th, 2009 11:06am Report this commentBalls and Brown are two of a kind-all cynical talk and no substance.They are like two small time and worn out actors who have eventually managed to get on to the stage long after the audience has departed.They deserve each other.
greenslime3
November 17th, 2009 12:30pm Report this commentYes, he is almost certainly positioning himself for a swipe at the leadership once Moron steps away to spend more time with his family.
But he probably truly believes that he is doing the right thing – in the same way that Lenin and Stalin, et al, considered they were doing the right thing by slaughtering millions of their own countrymen (deliberately or accidentally) in pursuit of the utopian dream that is socialism. Different ends of the spectrum, I know, but the logic which gets us there is the same – and Balls is just as much a bully as Brown - I wonder if Mrs Balls has been warned by the police of this tendency?
He clearly believes that anyone (or thing) with any money can be squeezed a little bit more. He has never worked in a proper job outside of the political arena (leader writer at the FT doesn’t count). He has absolutely no concept of how businesses work (apart from in theory) and that good businesses pay taxes - which, ultimately, is what is needed to pay for the running of government and to benefit the less fortunate in society (many of whom have arrived there directly as a result of this government's policies and actions. It looks to me like he sees taxation merely as a method of raising cash to buy votes and doesn’t care a damn about anything else.
The worry is that the people who vote for the likes of Balls are the ones who will be hurt most as we slip further into the mire under the policies of this government. And many of those individuals don’t have the interest or intellectual capacity to think through the promises and inevitable consequences of what Moron, Cahones, the Prince of Darkness and their ilk are dragging us into in their death throes.
As Heseltine once said, "There you have it! The final proof. Labour's brand new, shining, modernists' economic dream. But it's not Brown's - it's Balls".[
Cuffleyburgers
November 17th, 2009 12:40pm Report this commentGordon is a moron.
So is Ed
paul marchant
November 17th, 2009 2:23pm Report this commentLiz Brown
Balls by name, Balls by nature
And Mc Bride by character
Stepney
November 17th, 2009 4:23pm Report this commentEd Balls - the over-promoted horse in the house of Caligula Brown.
Chuck Unsworth
November 17th, 2009 6:10pm Report this commentAlways though Balls was a bit of a Brass.
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