The Ed Balls approach to fiscal management

saltirethinking

Ed and Yvette, two more stools in the pan of destiny.

Mitch

So its sod the country I have a career to think about. Ed balls if you read this You are pathetic!

Wrinkley But Nice

On the Andrew Marr Show this morning Balls claimed that while the "sorting out of details" went on into Tuesday night, Alistair Darling had already gone to bed. Whose PBR ?

Nick

Alistair Darling is Chancellor of the Exchequer, one of the Great Offices of State and he's been a member of the Cabinet since 1997. Why doesn't he just tell Ed Balls to f*** off ?

Moraymint

It's this sort of vignette, if true, that really does make me hope fervently for a Labour election victory.

The result on Britain's streets, in due course, would make the French Revolution look like a picnic.

The UK's insolvency - masked as it is for the time being by political shenanigans and a delayed fuse - would become an everyday reality for thousands of state-funded organisations and, therefore, millions of people: claimants and state employees. That is, increasingly the state would be unable to meet its payments as they fell due.

At that point, millions of currently disinterested state clients (Labour voters) would take an active and unhealthy interest in politics.

Bring it on.

At least then a real political leader (Churchill-like) might emerge who could/would grip the situation and start the process of putting Great Britain back on its feet.

Meantime, scum politicians like Balls continue to wreak their Marxist havoc.

Crooked Crocodile

All Mr and Mrs Balls care about is their status and ministerial salary. As a posh public schoolboy from a rich family, who never quite fitted in during his school days, all Ed Balls is bothered about is making sure that he leaves as big a mess as possible to the other successful and confident public school boys in that other party when they come into power.

Sally Chatterjee

He's trying to look good for the upcoming Labour Party election contest. As if being Brown's closest ally isn't damaging enough, the hapless man now wants to put his party popularity ahead of the nation's economic stability.

I believe his seat is a marginal, no?

Simon Stephenson

Just imagine, if you will, that the Balls/Brown guiding principle for advancing society is not to support the current monetary value system, but to cripple it. Do they see a system of value-exchange as being irreconcilable with the sort of centralised power which is their overriding political goal? Is their real intention to corrupt money to such an extent that there will be no alternative but to replace choice by allocation?

Isn't this a more plausible explanation for their actions than that they are so half-witted as to have spent the last twelve and a half years making mistakes?.

R

The way that the country is run is really depressing.

As someone said above, why did Darling even discuss this with Balls/Cooper once his mind was made up? In no business would the CFO put up with this kind of ridiculous behaviour, let alone actually make concessions due to being hassled like this.

Nicholas

Simon Stephenson. Yes. They are Marxists and have presided over a stealth cultural revolution.

Snowman

Moraymint: I side with Charlie Marx – if the English were to have a revolution, it will be in gardening.

Robert Williams

Sally "I believe his seat is a marginal, no?"

I think that must have been a joke; per Wiki "In the 2005 general election he was elected MP for Normanton with a majority of 10,002 and 51.2% of the vote

gareth

Yes moraymint - our island history, the common law in particular is a story of resistance to bad government. I do hope conservative half measures and appeasement will be miraculously postponed so that Labour can reap the whirlwind and the voters get a taste of their own hypocrisy.
Bring it on!

Chris lancashire

Try saying "so what?" to the international bond markets or the IMF.

Marcher Baron

"The result on Britain's streets, in due course, would make the French Revolution look like a picnic." Hélas, mon ami Moraymint, the English (at least) don't appear to do French style revolution (just think of all those missed opportunities in 1688, 1848 and 1968). Civil War, maybe. Or as El Gordo would call it, Class War.

TGF UKIP

While one half of me goes with the substance of Moraymint's post which is what a number of us have been hankering after for the past few years, I also fear that what Simon Stephenson says has considerable merit.

Certainly across the pond there is a strong body of opinion which believes that this is exactly what the marxists who occupy the White House are about. Bringing about the collapse of the US economy by submerging it in debt and unaffordable entitlements and using their political skills and their supine media to put the blame on the free market system ie exactly as Brown is doing by blaming the banks. The command and control state is then presented as the only viable option.

Given the level of mass indoctrination over the past three decades via the education system and via state broadcasting, "the common sense and good judgement" of the British voters can no longer be relied upon.

For those Coffee Housers who want to see firm evidence for just how successful the Brown message is and how utterly useless and politically outperformed the Cameron Tories are, all you need do is look at the wide geographical spread of council by-election results from the past week set out by David Lindsay in his post on Fraser Nelson's piece on this weekends poll on Saturday night. Uniformly dire for the Tories and almost correspondingly splendid for Labour. No wonder Brown & co are so confident.

Paul M

It's becoming more and more obvious that having MP's and ministers without substantial previous experience of real life in the private sector is akin to having armed forces generals brought in directly from the New Age Poets' Cooperative Commune. People like Ed Balls and his wife simply live in another world, and are intellectually incapable of connecting today's spending with tomorrow's consequences. I think we need fundamental reform of who can actually be an MP and who can hold a ministerial position, of whatever rank. The current system obviously does not result in competent management of the country's affairs, and it will be young people today, and our children after them, that pay the price.

FaustiesBlog Libertarian

Mein Gott! Imagine the glassy-eyed Marxist zealot as Chancellor!

Wilhemina Bothwell

Could his objective in wanting more money for schools be for the purpose to futher indoctrinate and corrupt our children ?

Dorothy Wilson

Surely the heading should be: Balls approach to fiscal mismanagement.