And what about the Lib Dems?
Peter Hoskin 10:11am
After the gales of recent weeks, the past few days must have been relatively blissful
for the Lib Dems. No fake constituents with hidden dictaphones. No massive student protests. No especial focus on their opinion poll ratings. But, instead, a mephitic heap of problems, or at least
embarrassments, for Labour and the Tories. Warsi, Johnson, Coulson, even EMAs – Clegg & Co. have been spared the worst of it.
Which isn't to say that the Lib Dems will be unaffected by recent events. For instance, as Paul Goodman suggests, Andy Coulson's departure unsettles the delicate balance of the coalition – and that will always have ramifications, however minute, for the yellow half of it.
Yet it's the rise of Balls that may prove more significant for the Lib Dems. Not only is he likely to drag his party's fiscal programme even further away from the coalition's, but he is not a man that senior Lib Dems are inclined to trust. Here, by way of a reminder, are some of the snippets about Balls from David Laws' account of the coalition negotiations:
i) "I guessed that Balls would be willing to deal with the Lib Dems only if absolutely necessary, and while holding his nose."
ii) "Balls was already rumoured to be committed to taking Labour into Opposition. He stared into the distance as Mandelson talked, occasionally wincing at comments."
iii) "Danny asked: 'Can we rely on Labour MPs supporting an AV referendum?' 'That is what is guaranteed in our manifesto,' said Mandelson. Then Balls intervened: 'The Chief Whip thinks it could be difficult to get the AV referendum through. Many of our colleagues are opposed to it. It cannot be guaranteed.' It was a deadly intervention and, I felt, a calculated wrecking device. If a hotchpotch deal with Labour and various other parties could not deliver on our policy prospectus, on economic stability or even on the most modest form of electoral reform legislation, what on the earth was the point of it?"
iv) "I believe Balls, [Ed] Miliband and Harman achieved what they set out to deliver: the planting of significant doubts in our mind about the likelihood of a Lib-Lab coalition."
In the week that Ed Miliband first mooted the possibility of him working with Nick Clegg, his appointment of Balls may have made that union even more unlikely. On the level of both policy and – it seems – personality, the shadow chancellor is not simpatico with the current Lib Dem leadership.
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George Laird
January 22nd, 2011 10:30am Report this commentDear Peter
“And what about the Lib Dems?”
Don’t you mean David Cameron’s Lib Dems?
They are all Thatcher’s children now!
Nick Clegg sold the rat trap of a party out like a guy down the local flea market punting a ‘genuine’ East Midlands Persian rug!
I like this part of your post:
“he (Balls) is not a man that senior Lib Dems are inclined to trust”.
Pot and Kettle comes to mind.
Still nice to see the ‘pain’ being spread about isn’t it.
And less we forget, Vince Cable still has nuclear weapons to push, don’t you know!
Yours sincerely
George Laird
The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University
charles hercock
January 22nd, 2011 10:54am Report this commentMake no mistake Balls intends to show by rottweiller effectiveness against Cable and Osborne that he is the future.Far from harping back to Brown he will reinvent the party and eclipse then replace Lightweight Ed
Fiona
January 22nd, 2011 11:25am Report this commentI think in reality it was more the case that the Toryboy Lib Dems were holding their noses at the prospect of coalition with Labour.
However, if Balls, Miliband and Harman were in fact responsible for wrecking coalition talks with the Lib Dems, well good for them.
The polls show they made the right call - unlike the Lib Dems, whose scramble for power has given them very little influence and no end of grief!
Vulture
January 22nd, 2011 11:28am Report this comment@Charles Hercock.
I know you have been acting as Balls' PR man for ever Chazza, but its an utterly hopeless task. The words 'turd' and 'can't polish' come readily to mind.
Apart from the fact that he, more than any other man aside from his boss Brown , is personally responsible for the dire mess we're in, he is personally as appealing to the general public - and his own party - as a pork pie salesman at a Bar Mitzvah.
So give up the Balls-boosting Chaz : you're on a hiding to nothing.
normanc
January 22nd, 2011 11:29am Report this commentWhy on earth should senior Labour figures worry what David Laws or Nick Clegg think of Ed Balls?
Does anyone think we will get another coalition anytime soon after the car crash that is this one?
Nicholas
January 22nd, 2011 11:36am Report this commentI love the way Labourites are so eager to publically admit their starry eyed admiration for the Brown Gang grotesques we have come to know and hate. In that fervid little world of the tribal left where the crime sheets pasted thick on its walls are whitewashed "No, no, no, we are in denial" these grotesques are heroes not zeroes.
Woody
January 22nd, 2011 11:48am Report this commentEdBalls is only sympathico with his own massive ego and the MSM will stay largely silent about this man's mendacious bullying and cunning, as they have in the past.
Simon Stephenson
January 22nd, 2011 11:53am Report this commentcharles hercock : 10.54am
If Balls is the future, then the future is so bleak that it's difficult to imagine anything to look forward to in life. Unless, of course, one is among those who see Nineteen Eighty-Four as inspirational, rather than dystopian.
TrevorsDen
January 22nd, 2011 12:35pm Report this commentThe coalition is not a car crash and as posted the elevation of balls will if anything cement it closer.
A headline in the Telegraph seemed to imply Miliband was trying to rein in Balls' deficit denying tendencies.
So they are split already.
ollie
January 22nd, 2011 12:37pm Report this commentWhat is this hysteria surrounding Ed Balls? He's being mooted by the BBC as some kind of economic genius, and indestructable hard hitting politico - I urge people to look at the facts instead of BBC hyperbole.
If I am not mistaken, the Labour front bench is almost exactly the same one that got 29% at the last general election.
Brown must be delighted that his hand picked team are still there.
Labour new politics? No - the politics that has taken this country to near disaster.
Paddy
January 22nd, 2011 9:46pm Report this commentI didn't know these kids were getting EMA.
I didn't know what EMA was.
Labour really stitched us up didn't they.....making these kids so dependant on the state that they would vote for them forever.
And they've got the nerve to complain about giving the free bus pass to pensioners.
2trueblue
January 23rd, 2011 10:16am Report this commentBalls will try with his friend Brogan to rewrite the economic history. Journalists would do well to go into the archives of the BBC and dig out a piece by either Dispatches or such like program of Balls/Brown/Whelan on the night Liebore got in in 1997 gleefully congratulating themselves at having pulled the wool over the Bank of England committee. Very telling to see who got the power in 1997 and how they viewed the situation. Balls is a nasty piece of work and no amount of education or intellect can remove the stench that lingers around him. What exactly did he do in his time to provide for the generation that Liebore shackled to poverty of the mind, aspiration, spirit, and left us with the most poorly educated generation of our time?They traded decency for the cheap buck which nails people to the floor in the name of benefit. what benefit? It benefits no one if you take aspiration out of it and that is what Balls is all about.
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