Balls pitches for the leadership

Stepney

If anything should give you a nice warm snug feeling it's this news.

Balls is a true incompetent. An incorrigible statist and a vile trougher of the first order. He has as much knowledge of the lives of ordinary people as I have of particle physics.

Rejoice. He's the nail in the coffin that will see Labour confined to a generation in Opposition.

Frank P

"Father Balls"?

Christ - has he taken Holy Orders, too?

Marek

Well Fraser, if you feel that Balls is "smart" then we have a real problem.

Either he actually is smart and therefore out for what he can get by appealing to the Labour hardcore or, even worse, he isn't smart and you have been seduced by him.

The third option would be entirely grotesque!

Frank P

Btw: there is no such thing as a 'genuine' lefty. All lefties are mendacious and devious; both characteristics are the major tools of their ideology (which is why they have so much in common with Islam). He is certainly a committed leftie, but that's different. No doubt he is familiar with Marx, Engels, Hegel, Lenin, Trotski, Gramsci, the Frankforters, Foucault, et alia, and he probably has a copy of Alinski's 'Rules for Revolutionaries' strapped beneath his left trouser leg (obviously much more dangerous than a Yemeni cocktail of chemicals).

His role in the Government's Education agenda is no coincidence, surely? Neither is his marriage to that hard faced harridan; no man could possibly agree to conjugal rights with that other than by ideological dictate, surely? Smart?

Ferk orft Fraser. How can anybody who is committed to the red flag be classified as smart? Deluded; baleful; malignant; destructive; power-crazy; envious - all of those, but smart?

Now I know why the incongruous sinistral bloggers have been recruited for this magazine - you think that communism is smart! How can anyone who adheres to a secular cult with the worst record of mass murder in the history of the world (even masquerading under a thinly-veiled watered-down version of it) be considered to be smart? And … 'pitching for the leadership' of this misbegotten neo-Marxist mockery?

In the unlikely event of Labour winning the General Election, what makes you think that Brown will give up his Premiership - with a mandate from the public??

You’re not suggesting they will dump him before the General Election, are you? They wouldn't dare!

He has clung on so far without such a mandate, so in the event of an electoral victory, he'll strut around No.10 like Napoleon; in fact he'll probably dissolve the Monarchy and declare himself the Emperor of the Green Planet Earth and Grand Financial and Fiscal Comptroller of the New World Order. On the other hand, if Labour loses the election - it will be comparatively irrelevant who 'leads' the residue of the ragtag and bobtail ‘party’; they will fight like ferrets in a sack and destroy their malign assembly of arseholes for the foreseeable future - probably forever. This article is not about Balls; it is balls.

I'd check your Shampoo supplier, Fraser, he's putting your brand slogan in dire jeopardy – with articles like this you could be in breach of the Trade Descriptions Act 1968 (as amended by the Trade Descriptions Act 1998). Is the bairn keeping you awake o’nights?

Mitch

Cameron has got his xmas wish, someone worse than gordon to take on.
what a vile and useless man balls truly is.

Alan Douglas

"as young and as smart as Balls (yes, CoffeeHousers, smart)"

Fraser, did you imbibe rather more than you should ? Young, yes. But "Smart" requires that the thinking leads on to actions (or in-actions) that produce betterment for the areas thought about. Does Balls really achieve this, or rather, is he too presciently named ?

Alan Douglas

Paul

Balls has to get elected at the GE first. This is absolutely not nailed on - Antony Calvert is doing a fantastic job in Morley and Outwood and I have this pegged as Labour's "Portillo Moment".

Woody

The balls' of this man is just breathtaking!!

canonalberic

Rather difficult to know which is more patronising Mr Balls' family Gosplan, or your thinking it necessary to emphasise to your readers that you know him - and he's smart.

Liz Brown

that's the death knell for Liebour then...........

The Laughing Cavalier

NO! He is not smart. Along with many others I am sick and tired of hearing you describe Balls as clever. Everything he touches turns to dross. He was as much, perhaps more, responsible as Brown for the destruction of private pensions and the ludicrous tri-partitie regulation of banks. This is a man who, underneath the smarty-pants demeanour that you in the Westminster village love so much, is actually as thick as two short planks out together. There has never been such a destructive and malign pair in British politics as the Brown-Balls axis.

The laughing Cavalier

And another thing, if he is as clever as you Westminster villagers keep telling us then one can only conclude that the destruction he has wrought on the economy and the very fabric of society is deliberate.

Prodicus

No mystery about the Balls 70s mindset. He and his comrades have lived in an intellectual comfort bubble ever since their political hormones peaked in their teens. Why grow up when auto-/mutual 'satisfaction' is assured as long as you can stick (sic) together and keep grown-ups and the other gang out of the room?

Johnnyjackhammer

"Smart"...Balls! I don't doubt he has considerable formal intelligence but when combined with moral certainty, statist preferences and ignorance (his understanding of educaton is a classic example) makes him the worst kind of policy maker. There are many on the political left who are equally unaware of their deeply entrenched and ideological /religious prejudices. Inspite of this they could be considered on a personal level to be jolly good sorts. But Balls with power is not in this category. He is seriously very scary! "Smart" does not do him justice!

Michael Booth

Q: what would you like to see hanging from your Christmas Tree this year?

A: Balls

Red Threads

So what are you actualy objecting to about the statement,

“I think our family policy now is actually about the strength of the adult relationships and that is important for the progress of the children.”

, Fraser?

You immediately go off on a tangent so you can parrot the Tory line about promoting marriage and ending welfare depedency.

Unemployment under Thatcher peaked at 3.5m. That's 3.5m families "robbed of their economic function".

In this recession, at least the Government is trying to do something about it. Wild predictions of 3m or even 4m unemployed now - with any luck - seem wide of the mark.

This is because of Government action like the Young Britain campaign - a pledge to create 85,000 jobs for the young - more apprenticeships and univesity places.

Balls may be stuck in the 1970s ... you are stuck in the 1930s, 15% unemployment and all.

idle

Yes. yes, we've heard before how 'smart' tubby Balls is. The laurels of academe and all that.

We have a man here who on the one hand knows all about 'neo-classical endogenous growth theory', and on the other is foolish enough to put it in his master's speech, expecting the punter in the street to take it seriously.

Balls' fingerprints are all over this wreck of public finances. His wife's, too.

You call him smart if you want to. I call him an arrogant wrongheaded boor.

Ralph

Am I confusing the tribal Ed Balls who comes across as both a bit odd but also rather creepy when you see him on television with another Ed Balls or is Labour about to pick a worse leader than they have now?

David Ossitt

Fraser Nelson.

“I have always been amazed at how someone as young and as smart as Balls (yes, CoffeeHousers, smart)”

No Fraser; not now not ever, leastwise not in the sense that you obviously meant, not in any way as an adjective.

However he is the cause of much pain; so calling him a smart pain in the bum would be entirely appropriate.

It would be a wonderful New Year present for those of us who loath all of his socialists ideals if he were to be the new leader, as he is disliked as much as his Stalinist boss.

Alan Douglas

... and another thing : The dictatorial look is there, the arogance is there, but where oh where is the little toothbrush moustache ? Last time round it humanised him, (for a while).

Alan Douglas

Nicholas

The words smart and scheming seem to be conflated these days.

Irene

I'm sorry but he dpes have a speach impediment and stutters rather badly when pushed - bring it on!

Chris lancashire

No, not smart. Arrogant, bullying, clever, overbearing, myopic, intolerant. But smart? No.

And please, please do let him take over from clown Brown.

Tarquin Superbus

The man *is* quite smart, and yes, he has a nasty, self-interested streak. He's a politician; get over it. Compared to some of the other options out there for the Labour leadership (Harman), he's not that bad.

Why does everyone who comments on this blog seem to be convinced that the BBC, radical Islam, the entire Labour Party and anything more left wing than the Daily Mail is in on one giant conspiracy against Ye Olde England?

I would describe myself as a broadly right wing person, but that doesn't mean I dismiss the entire Labour Party as some sort of hybrid of Norsefire and Ingsoc, as some here seem to do.

A permenant right wing government (which most here seem to want) is impossible, so why not have the best leadership for both the major parties? Then, maybe we can discuss some, *policies* rather than a quip about how "How Liebour want to turn the county into saudi Britannia lol traitors i love ukip"

Frank Leader

It doesn't matter who becomes Leader of the Labour Party. Just lead them into obscurity for the next 2,000 years.

Gawain

Father Christmas does exist !! He must do because Brown and Balls leading the Labour election campaign is a wonderful present. The Conservatives might now win a majority and they will wreck the Labour Party as surely as they have wrecked the economy. Roll on the New Year.

King Prawn

What gets me with the Balls/Brown partnership is that policies are made not for the benefit of the country but to create dividing lines with the Tories.

I remember when Tony Blair brought out his last Education Bill, Balls was writing in the New Stateman stating that the bill wouldn't get through Parliament and complaining that there was no dividing lines with the Tories.

If these two idiots had actually thought about running the government for the benefit of the people instead of their obsessional hatred of the Conservatives then Labour may not be facing meltdown at the next election.

Andy Leeds

Balls is what he has always been: a damn fool. The fact that along with his lord and master 'Gordon the Moron' he has managed to all but destroy the states finances proves what a blithering idiot he actually is. I hope he loses his seat at the General Election along with his ghastly wife.

Olaf Rye

In response to those that adduce the unemployment rate under the Thatcher years--do bear in mind that those that would have been rendered redundant now work for the state, which was Gordon Brown's 'miracle' of employment. He merely expanded the state and offer people jobs, but the worst thing about this is that they are untouchable and those working in the private sector are fleeced to keep those people in the public sector employed to meddle with our lives. So, to protect these civil servants, we are now condemned to financing a monstrous debt that will cripple Britain for at least the next decade. Oh, how wonderful socialism is ! Does anyone even bother to recite the slogan about Gordon Brown's economic genius anymore ?

Frank P

Irene

"Speach impediment"?

Scientifically known as Prunus Persica Syndrome, I believe. Symptoms: when under pressure the sufferer stutters, appears to have swallowed a soft fruit kernel and dribbles juice down the chin. Nasty. The complaint is genetic, carried by the Y Chromosome and originally engendered in a forebear who was so shocked when reaching the age cognisance, when he realised the implications of his given name, that one of his genes mutated and has been passed on to each generation of his progeny ad infinitum. Poor man.

Nicholas

Red Threads - utter rubbish. New Labour, the re-invented, pretend Labour party. The mask of incompetence covering the face of cod-communist ex-student Marxists. No mandate, no election. No manifesto. Just Tony Blair the Great Pretender handing the country over to the deluded, deranged extremists who had jumped on his bandwagon.

New Labour - the man who sets his own house on fire, tries to put out the flames with petrol, blames it all on someone else and then creates a tangled web of bureaucratic RED tape and regulations to prevent the emergency services from coming to the rescue.

And Thatcher? The Great Socialist Myth that you have parroted for decades as the cause of all our ills when the real problem is your stinking party and its adherents. Get another story, get another life, preferably get another country. I'm mightily bored with socialists and all their endless scams and lies. I suspect that I am not alone.

You and your rotten, stinking, corrupt red faction ruin this country (again) and then you have the audacity, after nearly 13 years of this socialist tripe, of coming on here whingeing about Thatcher?

Red Threads? Red Threadbare more like.

eeyore

Your correspondents don't seem to rate Mr Balls's brain power as highly as you do. Why don't you prove them wrong by reminding us of a few of his wise and penetrating apophthegms; or of the many learned and farsighted books and articles he has penned; or of those precisely targeted shafts of razor wit with which he so elegantly destroys his opponents; or the statesmanlike profundity of his policies, proven by results and the passage of time; or the quaint, kindly jokes which illumine his expansive and generous humanity; or indeed of any notable achievement at all by which Mr Balls has raised his intellectual character above the ruck. Or perhaps you have other criteria for judging intelligence. Come on, don't be shy, tell us what they are!

Mr Brown too is often described as possessing a formidable intelligence, but, again, one still waits to see the evidence. Indeed, if his unusual ability to complicate and obfuscate is anything to go by, his mind seems actually more dull and muddy than the average. Can it really be that both he and Mr Balls are not only promoted far above their desserts, but praised likewise?

Frank S

'Smart'? Only as in 'smart Alec'. It is not possible for decent people to be both left-wing and highly-intelligent - the sorry sagas of the 20th century, mostly notably in Germany, Russia, and China, have put paid to that. But ruthless people can be both highly intelligent and left-wing if they see advantage in it. So, I end my peroration by observing that my superficial knowledge of Balls certainly qualifies him for the 'smart Alec' epithet, and his apparent leftiness makes me conclude that if he is indeed highly intelligent, then he is also very ruthless. Either way, he does not belong to that subset of humanity which I would label 'decent'.

Frank P

Red Threads (10.28am)

Now, now Mrs Balls! Very gallant of you to try to swim against the tide of vitriol that Fraser has unleashed with his intentionally provocative ( I suspect) seasonal satire, but as you can now see, it's a hopeless endeavour. You of all people must know that your husband is a massive Kuwaiti Tanker.

oldtimer

This looks like the latest shot in the coming battle for control of what will be left, and the Left, of the Labour party after the next election. Apart from Brown`s unpopularity, the increasing evidence of a split in the party will be bad news for Labour. Voters dislike split parties.

It seems to me that Brown is arrogant enough to hang on to the bitter end - and beyond if he can. It also seems there is a faction in the Labour party (the Blairite wing?) that wants him out but lacks the putative leader with the gumption (and TU money?) to topple him. In this context the Balls bid is no more than added noise, putting down a marker for when Brown goes. If he, Balls, gets TU support and cash then his bid would be greatly strengthened. But it is difficult to see him as a vote winning candidate for PM.

Marcher Baron

"Labour’s election focus will be on the family" Shame everything they've actually DONE over the last dozen years has systematically destroyed the family, rigging benefits so couples are better off when they split up, making the production of illegitimate children by a succession of absent fathers a lifestyle more profitable than actually working for a living.

Bob

Smart? No. Clever yes. Clever etymologically means something with sharp claws, of a predatory nature, enough said.

Chuck Unsworth

Clever, smart, intelligent - well, whatever.

Does he have (any) moral integrity?

Holly ......

Red Threads.
You are funny.
Do you really believe your comment?
How many adults of working age are not in work?
How many adults of working age are in FULL TIME work not part time work?
How many more adults of working age will be unemployed by the time the long awaited election gets here?
27,000 businesses have gone to the wall since last year.
That is 17,500 MORE than in the 80's and 3,000 MORE than in the 90's.
God help us if the Conservatives had been in power, they may have regulated the banks better and avoided Britain being in the longest recession for 70 years!
The nasty Tories would have let Northern Rock go under and the queue for bailouts would NEVER have happened,Fred would NEVER have got his digusting payout and the banks would have deferred all bonuses,thus saving the taxpayer billions, but hey ho, Labour know best and taxes will pay for everything.
Now go away and find something positive that Labour have done for the benefit of everyone in Britain.
Got rid of Blair could be one thing I suppose.
Showing another generation how crap Labour are could be another one.

General Zod

It is lazy to dismiss the enemy as stupid. Labour has plenty of clever, wrong people, including Balls (but not of course Brown).

Balls is a clever, nasty piece of work, but one who is transparently wrong on every subject.

Nicholas

"Why does everyone who comments on this blog seem to be convinced that the BBC, radical Islam, the entire Labour Party and anything more left wing than the Daily Mail is in on one giant conspiracy against Ye Olde England?"

Because they have been and they are. If you are too stupid to see it or too naive to believe in such organised malevolence you are just one of the many hundreds of thousands of "useful idiots" who have let it happen, starting way back in the 1960's. Perhaps you think what has happened and the fact that the current crop of idiots running the country all happen to have been student Marxist extremists is just a coincidence?

For the umpteenth time I am NOT a Daily Mail reader but I think there are far worse deceits in play than that rag. Thatcher and the Daily Mail are the Left's smokescreens, aided and abetted by supposed right wingers like you. Actually you sound about as right wing as a Cameron blancmange!

Publius

Mr Nelson seems to have taken on board that good journalism should not be thought-provoking, but merely provoking. So he baits his readers.

It reveals his contempt for his readership, his youth, and, worse still, reveals the same character flaws he seems to admire so much in Mr Balls.

Publius

As for the 22.5% VAT, have you been briefed, or is that just a thumb-suck? Why don't you write to Mr Balls and suggest he uses that as ammo too?

Tarquin Superbus

The "student Marxist extremists" comment is a tad interesting, considering the topic of the thread is the Rt Hon. Edward Balls MP.

A student Marxist? Hardly. A student Tory? Now you've got it!

The "Big Lie" theory always resonates well with the British people (I wonder why) but it really doesn't hold water. You only have to look at the current government to realise its grave difficulties in *surviving*, let alone being any part of a grand conspiracy.

JohnBUK

Olaf Rye 12:54 - agreed, not forgetting to leave out the hundred's of thousands of teenagers who are being systematically fleeced to pay for the wonderful "university education" and fortunately remain off the unemployment register at the same time. What a wheeze that is.

In2minds

Genral Zod @ 3.58pm - Balls is - "is transparently wrong on every subject".

But that's not very clever then is it?

Tom FD

Isn't this the man who complained on Twitter that his working hours of 10am-3pm were "not very family friendly"? I can't wait for him to take the reigns of the Labour party and make them even more unelectable than in 1983.

TrevorsDen

Balls is certainly not smart, any more than red threads is (and he certainly needs to get a life).
Mr threads - unemployment currently hangs on a cusp, We have massive short time working and wage freezes. This cannot go on for ever. Companies are desperate to keep labour but are desperate as well to survive. The corollary of less unemployment is that new jobs will only slowly revive.

If Mr Balls were truly smart he would be able to give a lucid explanation for all the economic policies he has been lumping on us resulting in a trillions worth of extra debt.
Only a genius would be able to explain just how much good it has done us.

The notion that Labour will elect someone with all the hallmarks and attributes of Martin Boorman (including the Nazi uniform) is truly bizarre.

Anne Wotana Kaye

All the blogs seem full of balls. Will this Balls get burned too?

Old Soldier

"Balls is smart".

Perhaps in the way that my old Sgt Major used to espouse, "He can calculate the volume of a tin of beans but he ca'nt open the bastards".

Jabba the Cat

"Balls is a true leftie"

You mean he has his head firmly up his arse?

Nicholas

Tarquin: "A student Marxist? Hardly. A student Tory? Now you've got it!"

Well, you clearly haven't:-

"He (Balls) joined the Tories at Oxford because they used to book top-flight political speakers, and only members were allowed to attend their lectures. Ed was, however, also a member of the Labour Club. He was more active in that, and was always, at heart, a man of the left."

For someone "broadly right wing" you seem to have the Left's love of not letting the facts get in the way of a good story.

Roger Davies

Surely it would be best to praise Balls and con that thoroughly rotten party of opportunists that he is their best bet, as his credibility with Joe Public is near zero. Praise him from the roof tops, he is smart, he is photogenic, he is overflowing with charisma and has bottom, a rather large one.

AndyinBrum

Balls is clever, in a weasley, devious, spitefull way. I'm sure he has his good points, but he's managed to hide them very well, and from what I hear, the Civil Service hold him in utter contempt. (more so than the usual contempt they hold for ALL ministers of all parties)

Polly Gamma

"Clever etymologically means something with sharp claws, of a predatory nature."

Yes Bob - Nature red in tooth n' claw.

David Ossitt

Nicholas

Spot on in each of your posts!

hadrian

We all know this just an Election Year scam. What humanistic Labour really believes about marriage is what that nippy sweetie, Harman, says about it. They have no moral absolutes so let's not delude ourselves nor let them delude us a moment longer.