Balls' attempt at credibility falls short

Sally Chatterjee

It reeks of positioning and manoeuvring, a rearguard action to buttress weak opinion polls.

I wonder if he has his fingers crossed behind his back?

Pettros

A better than expected interview with the Guardian. There is certainly progress.

Paul Danon

The job of opposition isn't just to be a government-in-waiting. It must say what it would do differently. Labour wants simultaneously to seem responsible about the need to cut yet also to criticise cutting. If some cuts are too far and too fast, what are they and what would Mr Balls have done? And what are these cuts anyway, when public spending is now higher than under Labour?

lloydj

Plan A wins the day!!

Simon Stephenson.

Well, what about all this, Fatbloke? Are you also prepared to mislead people into believing that you accept a policy you consider to be ruinous to your cause? Do you also consider it acceptable to suggest that you would follow a policy which in reality you have no intention of following?

How much does Labour re-election mean to you, Fatbloke? Enough to re-start the disreputable Blair/Brown process of hoodwinking people about your real intentions? Wouldn't you feel more honourable if you were elected by people who actually believed in what you intended to do, rather than being enticed by cloud-cuckoo-land promises which you know full well that you are most unlikely to be able to deliver?

jon dee

The funniest aspect of Balls visit to Today, was not his predictable opportunism or the reminder that Gordon Brown doublespeak is alive and well, but wee Jimmy's callow journalistic performance.

Scarcely bothering to hide his bias, Naughtie brought the art of the stage-managed interview to a new level, by avoiding the real reasons behind Balls drastic change of direction.

Leveson et al - hope you all listened to the BBC at work.

Mike, Brighton

No matter how good and expensive the polish. No matter expert and professional the polishers; you can't polish a turd.
That turd being Ed Balls and his economic credibility.

JohnOfEnfield

A more meaningful admission would be that Labour (New or Old) has destroyed the British Economy every time it has got into power. Socialism never works.

Never. Ever. Works!

David Ossitt

Jonathan Jones.

Your final paragraph below had me screaming at my computer screen.

“It all leaves you wondering: if Ed Balls is right and those particular cuts – he cites the Future Jobs Fund and EMA – are ‘destructive’ and are increasing the deficit, why on earth wouldn't he reverse them?”

How can you possibly wonder if Ed Balls is right, was he not as equally guilty as the sad , mad, bad Gordon Brown in bringing our country down to its knees and into the dreadful pickle that we are now trying to climb out of.

That the man is incompetent is beyond dispute, that he is a liar is beyond doubt.

Socialism in all of its myriad forms has been shown to be an illusion, those who still follow the socialist dream are deluded, it simply does not work and yet it still lives on.

Simon Stephenson.

David Ossitt : 11.36am

Balls and Brown are incompetent only if you measure their performance against what they claimed they were trying to achieve. If, on the other hand, you start from the idea that they were deliberately trying to destabilise and hamper the workings of the non-State economy, then it can be claimed, quite realistically, that they displayed great competence in this aim.

continued below

Holly ......

The only one's swallowing this massive lump of garbage are the Left. The man is a liar, yet today he 'speaks the truth'.

This is for the brighter folks's benefit, to try and con us into thinking he is now
'fiscally competent', but in reallity he is a complete opportunistic nut job.

The only way to rid the country AND Labour of the entire lot of them is for the Labour constituents to show some backbone.
'We are not ready to govern' Reeves, sums it up in a nutshell,yet even she gets it wrong...It should have been,'we are not fit to govern, never have been, never will be'.

As Labour are so happy to 'blame the bankers' for the latest Labour screw up, what are the reasons for all the previous Labour government screw up's?

Laugh?
I could eat a plateful.

Writeangle

The coalition haven't exactly made many cuts yet. It is virtually impossible for Labour to say they will make cuts. Cuts mean public sector employees losing their jobs and the public sector is where unions are strong. Public unions are the main backers therefore owners of the Labour party. The public are well aware of this slight difficulty that Labour dare not mention. Labour incompetence by deliberately having low interest rates to feed the house price boom allowed the public to borrow to the hilt against these price rises. This kept the consumer boom going but was an irresponsible act.

David B

The problem for Ball's is simple, who can believe a word he says in light of his past actions and deeds

Sir Graphus

Only believe Balls if you believe Brown when he said "I will be an iron chancellor"

Lord Wallington

This bloke is an even bigger K**B than Millie-bland !

Bob Dixon

Balls is finished in politics.He should resign and seek new pastures.

David L

Is Balls truly a repentant sinner? Or is he merely telling us what the party managers have decided we want to hear? I might be persuaded by Balls' apparent Damascene conversion if he repudiates Labour's fiscal incontinence.

And pigs might fly......

Nicholas

Labour is like a religion. Despite any evidence to the contrary the faithful will still have faith and the most incompetent, corrupt and venal Labour government will be still be preferable to the most competent, honest and principled Tory government. The adherents will go through (and accept) any amount of convolutions and truth-twisting to get to the answer they want to hear (q.v. Fatso). With Labour's horrendously destructive record in Britain "dog-boiling" begins to look positively innocuous.

Not surprising then. What is surprising is just how much the media swallow this cynically manipulative, tribal tosh too, without giving Labour the full 15-inch broadside they so richly deserve.

2trueblue

Gosh a load of that IF Liebore got in at the next election, they would inherit a deficit! Well, the tories have always inherited a deicit from Liebore. The diffenece is this timeit is so massive and other countries who have been incontintnt with their money bloating their public sectors so this time it will take longer for us all to deleverage..... if possible. Rather grand for Balls to be able to get on the telly to tell us his news. I fail to remember the Tories getting a word in when they were the opposition. Balance in the media would be nice. What a thought!

Russell

Considering Labour has said consistently that they would have only halved the deficit if they had won the election, it is pretty hypocritical for Balls to suddenly announce his 'change of approach' because there will be deficit in 2015.

Allways lying and allways hypocrits, people should tear Balls and labour to shreds with these latest lies and spin.

David Lindsay

Any examination of the Mail and Telegraph newspapers confirms that the Coalition’s savage cuts in services and in spending power, the road to yet further economic ruin, are no more popular with Conservative supporters, Middle England, or what have you, than they are with anyone else.

The Coalition of Resistance to them can and must include Conservative supporters, Middle England, the Mail and Telegraph newspapers, and what have you. They would flock to a party which promised to bring back their libraries, their buses, and so on. Five by-election results and numerous local election results have indicated that they are already doing so.

Meanwhile, certain Labour councils in the North East have long been criticised, not without cause, for their reluctance to appoint from without. Across the public sector, the ability to recruit the best people from the national field depends on maintaining national pay structures. People like that who come here want to live in, say, Lanchester. That is no cheaper than living in a comparable part of any other area.

Yet what do we get instead? Ed Balls. If it is not the Blairobite partisans of David Miliband as the only legitimate heir, then it is this.

The case for a new party in this Parliament, already set out in part at http://davidaslindsay.blogspot.com/2012/01/yes-to-democracy.html and at http://davidaslindsay.blogspot.com/2012/01/get-this-party-started.html, is rapidly becoming unanswerable. What are the unions, the co-ops, and their MPs waiting for? What, exactly? And why, exactly?

justathought

Reading the John Redwood blog today I see that public spending seems to have gone up in real terms so really Balls can be quite confident in saying he won't reverse any of the present cuts (not that he stands a snowballs chance in hell of getting into government anytime soon)

AAE

I wouldn't expect Naughtie or any other the Pravda trained journos at the Ministry of Truth to correct the fallacy repeated above that cuts (to the public sector) push up unemployment and hence increases borrowing, but surely one of those keen boys at The Spectator would by now have noticed that it is less economically draining for the state to move unproductive workers from the public command economy pay list to the unemployment register. I know the unions like to say that their workers all pay tax and are therefore contributors to society, but that is only true in that the state gives them money with its left hand only to take part of it back as "tax" with the right.
With the focus seemingly always on defence and welfare, shouldn't some of our keener journos start asking questions about the biggest budget of all, the £170 billion spent on Quangos? And the nest time anyone starts bleating on about child poverty and other false targets, just ask if the London Borough of Lambeth really needs all 30 of its Climate Change Officers.

TrevorsDen

Balls is saying on the news that if in govt and the 'deficit is still there' they cannot change the cuts.
But his own policy was to supposedly cut more slowly, so the deficit would under his own plan still be there.
Labour fought the election on only reducing the deficit by 50%.

Balls is standing his own logic on his head.

David Lindsay

justathought, not "anytime soon", no. There cannot now be a General Election until May 2015. That is the law.

Tom Pride

As Balls tries to reposition his incredible economic policy, I thought I might share with you the words of his Shadow Financial Secretary, responding to a question on what Labour might cut on the Radio 4 World At One (Friday 13 January 2012 13:40 in).

continued

Tom Pride

“But the key thing is, of course, without growth in the economy you’re not going to get the revenues. This is two sides to the balance sheet - it is not just about cutting expenditure, you’ve got to boost incomes as well.”

Tom Pride

So not much creditability from his team either. Just more financial confusion from the Party that classifies all expenditure as investment. Hardly the stuff to inspire confidence in their re-found competence.

Chris lancashire

David Lindsay: If you want to promote your crappy little website please do it somewhere else.

Cynic

"... if Ed Balls is right and those particular cuts – he cites the Future Jobs Fund and EMA – are ‘destructive’ and are increasing the deficit, why on earth wouldn't he reverse them?" And even if he's wrong, why wouldn't he reverse them if he thought it would buy the party votes? If there weren't so many economic migrants taking the jobs of the indigenous workers, if those workers weren't paid more to be idle than work, if the education system were fixed so it actually turned out highly literate and motivated people and if it were finally acknowledged that not everybody needs to go to uni, giving handouts like EMA shouldn't be necessary.

Sir Everard Digby

Why should we gave any credence to a politician who was party to the 'mircle economy' which only grew because of government borrowing of c3% of GDP and the creation of a million public sector jobs.

Those one million,in part entered the housing market and created a housing/consumer boom.

This created a situation where homeowners believd that increased house values equalled wealth against which they could borrow to buy cars/tvs etc and could consider themselves 'rich'

That ran out of energy in 2007/8

Any policy, Balls or Milliband propose and any refernce to the economic good times from 2001-2007 should never be accepted.

In a normal society the only time the likes of these two would be allowed to comment in public would be at their sentencing review.

Yet the media still fawns over them. Why?