Balls on everything
Fraser Nelson 7:14pm
Good old Ed Balls. He has just given a lobby briefing attacking Tory education plans - at least that was his plan. But he ended up speaking about everything under the sun - Cherie's pregnancy, the wickedness of Frank Field, the hopelessness of Crewe, the errors of the 10p Budget, why Labour is "behind the curve" on family finances. He walked into bear trap after bear trap. The lobby loved it, unable to believe their luck. All of this eclipsed his orginal attack message.
As CoffeeHousers know, I'm keen on education so I, at least, wanted to know how Balls would attack the Tory policy. He suggested teachers would get sacked in unpopular schools (no, Ed, more schools do not lead to fewer teachers), and asked who will pay for the 220,000 "additional" places the Tories envisage. They got this bit wrong. The figure is not "additional" spending, but reallocated. Money would come out of "building schools for the future" fund. Yes, and used to build other schools - as chosen by parents rather than bureaucrats. Local authorities would not have control, he said, as if this was a self-evident outrage.
The lack of ammo in his attack rather underscored the strength of what Gove and Policy Exchange have produced. If Balls wants to take the fight to the Tories fair enough, but why start on the only policy area where they have a radical, thought-through and coherent plan?
The whole act - three ministers (Adonis and Jim knight) giving up their afternoon to attack a Tory policy - struck the lobby as strange. Some remarked that it looked like a sign of panic. Balls was asked why he was now producing the type of attack document one sees at elections. One journalist said all secondary schools in his borough (Greenwich) are "rubbish": what's the problem with someone setting up a new one? When challenged if his schools were that bad, he said 60% of parents send kids to schools outside the borough. Adonis promised two City Academies.
But this was before Balls starting speaking so freely on other topics. It was as if he were still a special adviser, briefing off the record. But here was a Cabinet member, stoking every controversy going. The only problem journalists had after was which line to go on. It was great stuff. Balls is an undeniably smart guy, but this may be the problem: he can't resist answering questions to which he knows the answer. At the end, he thanked us for coming. "Come back soon" someone replied to him. After tomorrow's press, I don't think he will be. More's the pity.
Previous
Comments
salieri
May 12th, 2008 8:06pmWe're continually being told how intelligent this chap is, but please where can we non-journos find the evidence for this lapidary pronouncement? We do keep looking for it, honestly, but with little success.
The Universal Briefing is a bad omen. I seem to recall that very shortly before ascending to the Purple - and never was the epigram 'capax imperii nisi imperasset' more appropriate - Gordo was likewise given to delivering his not so humble opinions on everyone else's ministry but his own (to their consideable annoyance).
Please, please not again. We've had 2 mobile-phone salesmen in office for 11 years already.
Play
May 12th, 2008 8:33pmI too am baffled as to why Balls, Yvette Cooper, James Purnell, “Little” Andy Burnham, etc, etc are all judged to be highly intelligent by the press. Yvette Cooper's most recent appearances on Newsnight have displayed a shameful inarticulacy matched only by Burnham's efforts on Question Time, and her husband's bizarre (albeit highly amusing) appearances on the Today programme. Are these really our brightest and best?
Dogface
May 12th, 2008 8:35pmAnd didn't I hear on C4 news that he attacked Darling's budget?
Athesius the facilitator.
May 12th, 2008 9:06pmThe whole lot of them are all rubbish, Balls, his misses, Straw, Burnham. The whole lot of them. Iwill go to my grave happy in the knowledge that the new labour project never fooled me, and yet the lobby, the papers and the tv media have just woken up to it. The Labour party have never really run this country they have just spent all this time keeping the Tory boys out by using smear and mis-information. And now they are finished and good riddance.
Trumpeter Lanfried
May 12th, 2008 9:35pmOne good thing to come out of the present chaos. The phrase 'capax imperii nisi imperasset' is now on everyone's lips. This can only help to revive interest in the wonderful economy of the Latin language.
Sean W
May 12th, 2008 9:42pmDon't mistake intelligence in Labour MPs for competence (again.)
TomTom
May 12th, 2008 9:48pmBalls, Cooper, Miliband were all journalists before getting on The Gravy Train - it is NUJ policy to praise their own as luminaries and intellectual giants whereas the rest of us think of Balls-Cooper etc as simply over-educated buffoons....oh I forgot to add Ruth Kelly as another journo cum Gravy Trainer
Just don't forget that suicidal students are always described as "brilliant"...that's why Nobel Prizes fall off Magdalen Bridge
Michael Sweeney
May 12th, 2008 10:33pmExcellent point from Salieri. I think the media looks up to politicians who work hard and know a lot of wonky stuff - mainly because relatively few of the media read up on it themselves. Problem is, many of the rest of us have to live with the consequences of all this meddling. Also, we have experience of working with Govt departments and the mismatch between rhetoric and action. A year ago Brown was positioned by many in the media as a righteous biblical prophet who handled summer trials by pestilence, flood and fire - but now?
Austin Barry
May 12th, 2008 10:39pmQuidquid Latine dictum sit, altum viditur, but since, Salieri old chap, we're a declining breed of languid toffs why do we bother having a conversation with ourselves. Let's embrace the demotic.
Peter
May 12th, 2008 11:03pmI'm afraid my question is the opposite to Salieri's. The few public utterances I've heard from Ed Balls are no worse than other cabinet figures (albeit rather oleaginous), yet he is clearly a major hate-figure in the Tory blogosphere. He must be doing something right to have risen pretty far pretty quickly in Labour ranks, and it has to be an over-simplification to say it is entirely due to being Brown's lackey. What is your fair assessment Fraser?
And why do we blog-dwellers insist on seeing people in such black-and-white terms? Isn't it rather childish to promote some folk to bile-inducing hate figures (Brown obviously, and Mr and Mrs Balls, for example), and rather naive to see heroes without blemish amongst the opposition? I find it strange that for months now you won't see a bad word in Tory blogs about Frank Field (whose disloyalty if mirrored by a Tory ex-minister would cause apoplexy), or, even more weirdly, Vince Cable. Other than the good Stalin - Bean one liner, and a reasonably coherent approach to Northern Rock that frankly showed George Osborne in a rather poor light, he strikes me as unpleasantly smug and a long long way away from Tory thinking on economic matters generally.
So why do some some peoples' faces fit, and others don't?
I have no answers, but I think it's a shame that discussions on the blogosphere seem so often to descend to carricature and Punch-and-Judy stuff.
One final thought - twenty years ago, I was no Tory and certainly no fan of Mrs Thatcher - but I found the spittle flecked bile and naked hatred dispayed towards her by her opponents in the media disturbing and grossly unfair. It is getting to that point now with Brown - I would like to think we right-of-centreists have better manners, but it is not looking that way so far.
Jock
May 12th, 2008 11:21pm"Intelligence is quickness to apprehend as distinct from ability, which is the capacity to act wisely on the thing apprehended" Alfred North Whitehead 1939.
I rest his case.
Nicholas Bennett
May 13th, 2008 1:54amYevette Cooper is one of those irrating Labour women who make you want to punch them in the face with their bossy, headgirl preaching. Not quite in the same league as Patricia Hewitt but then she hasn't had the practice.
Lee Jakeman
May 13th, 2008 2:32amIntelligence is the ability to learn. When was the last time Balls LEARNT something?
Fergus Pickering
May 13th, 2008 6:48amGood God! A quotation from Tacitus is nowon everybody's lips nd not just the lips of the privately educated who can actually understand it. Actually I can undestand it and I was educated for nothing AT A GRAMMAR SCHOOL, but then I am old.
David
May 13th, 2008 8:28amI thought Horace had just the right words to sum up this lot:
"Parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus".
Nicholas
May 13th, 2008 9:09amPeter: "He must be doing something right to have risen pretty far pretty quickly in Labour ranks, and it has to be an over-simplification to say it is entirely due to being Brown's lackey."
That may be naive. I've seen plenty of wrong'uns rise high through a combination of the right sponsorship, low cunning and the undermining of rivals. I'm not accusing Balls of such behaviour - I don't know - but it is hard to equate the superficiality apparent in his demeanour and speech with his elevated position.
Traditionally Britain has been cruel to its unpopular leaders and the current wave of hatred against Brown and New Labour has an 18th Century precedent. A plea for fair play is going to fall on deaf ears in the context that the whole of the current government rose by vile scheming and plotting, both in the genesis of New Labour (the weird and dishonest hybrid I have often referred to) and the succession of King Gordon. Lay on that the incompetence and arrogant detachment being shown by the government and no mercy is understandable, perhaps warranted.
Tiberius
May 13th, 2008 9:27amhttp://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2006/05/omnium_consensu.html - For a fuller exposition for those of us who have forgotten more Latin than we care to admit.
c.Holland
May 13th, 2008 8:26pmMe? I reckon that through a long life vixi puellae nuper adonais et militare non sine gloria served me well, at least the first bit.