Calls from Balls

Wednesday, 1st July 2009

The Spectator on Ed Balls' claims about the public finances

Tuesday was a busy day for Ed Balls, the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families. Not only did he launch ‘Your Child, Your Schools, Our Future’, the government’s new White Paper on schools reform, a document which he claimed enshrined ‘a radical devolution of power to head teachers, backed up by stronger accountability, and an uncompromising approach to school improvement so every child succeeds’. He also found time to phone two Spectator journalists — in one case, repeatedly — to harangue them at length about a post on our Coffee House blog.

The post in question, by our political editor, Fraser Nelson, took strong issue with Mr Balls over his performance on Tuesday’s BBC Today programme. In the interview, the Schools Secretary had declared: ‘We have acted in the downturn, that will mean that the economy is stronger, we’ll have less unemployment, less debt…’ Which came as something of a surprise, given that Britain’s total public debt is at record levels: government debt was £775 billion last month, is forecast in the Budget to rise steadily to a staggering £1.4 trillion by 2013/14 and is then forecast to keep on rising — albeit more slowly — for at least another decade. There are no plans, anywhere, for ‘less debt’. On 24 June, Mervyn King, the Governor of the Bank of England, told the Treasury select committee that the scale of these deficits was ‘truly extraordinary’. So, given the incontrovertible facts, what was Mr Balls up to? In his Coffee House post, Fraser concluded, ‘Team Brown is adopting a new strategy: repeat a lie, as often as possible, hoping the interviewer will not stop or correct you.’ You might have thought that the Schools Secretary would have been too preoccupied with the future of our children’s education and the white paper to take umbrage at a single post. But Mr Balls, it appears, can always make time for umbrage-taking. He telephoned Fraser and — claiming a ministerial prerogative power over the media of which we were previously unaware — instructed him to ‘take that post down now’. Separately, he also called the Spectator’s editor, Matthew d’Ancona, four times. When they finally spoke, he issued the same instruction to ‘take the post down’. Offered the chance to explain why we were wrong in his own online contribution, Mr Balls declined and proceeded to question our integrity, motives and so on. Perhaps we should not make light of such a matter, but there is something splendidly entertaining about being lectured on the ethics of the web by a friend of Damian McBride.

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Nicolas Storey

July 2nd, 2009 12:12pm Report this comment

Calls from Balls? Here's another one: why is The Spectator apologising to Alistair Campbell over its suggestion that he asked for the Butler report to be toned down? You might be 'champagne for the brain' but what have you got left between your legs -and is it subject to Brewer's Droop? One of three things: Butler did not have eyes to see; Butler toned down his report himself or, thirdly, the government of the day and its advisers (amongst which, Alistair Campbell had an unelected, central role) asked for this. Yes! the same government of the day which The Independent newspaper exposed as a fraud on Parliament (naming Blair and his Atorney-General Goldsmith as liars), in an article that was not, so far as I recall, ever subject to any threatened proceedings or any miserable apology. A fraud in that, to pursue Daddy Bush's feud against Saddam Hussain, the British government of the day, bent out of shape intelligence reports to seek to persuade Parliament to launch an unlawful invasion of another sovereign territory. In attempting further to expose this fraud, a renowned scientist, Dr David Kelly, died - and there has never been any satisfactory explanation of this. The people, in this Great Western Democracy (that is imposing itself, even on people that little understand it (and might be no better off if they did)), still expect answers to the Kelly riddle - that cannot really be explained away as a suicide of a man (a) brave enought to speak out yet (b) so afraid of - maybe an unjustified threat of - prosecution for an Official Secrets Act 'violation' that he'd kill himself under a tree.

Christopher Chantrill

July 3rd, 2009 12:09am Report this comment

Hmm. I suppose it's completely coincidental that this week you are running Cass Sunstein's recipe on how to make an extremist: Put Brown, Balls, and McBride into a room and stir.

chrush

July 3rd, 2009 12:21am Report this comment

No...try as I might I am STILL unclear on what on earth Balls and his crew are still doing here. Thought they`d have taken out the milk bottles after the BNP proved to be more popular than they are.Yet here they are-hanging around like a bad smell and hoping for a war or something...ANYTHING!
Balls and his Bisto kid wife personify all that is rotten in the body politic. Browns bagman feels entitled to scoff the criossants in the Green Rooms and the media indulge him with the perpetual personal use of the conversation stone. For Gods sake-give him no oxygen of discussion or publicity and he will gasp in the stale flatulence and whiff of gangrene that NuLabor tell us is lavender! Get them out!!!

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