It has long been suspected that there are tensions between Ed Miliband and Ed Balls. The pair fell out badly over the third runway at Heathrow in government and when Miliband was elected leader, he conspicuously didn’t offer Balls the job of shadow Chancellor. But since Balls became shadow Chancellor the pair has largely succeeded in keeping their differences under wraps.
But the leaked emails revealed by Simon Walters in the Mail on Sunday today, show what Miliband’s team privately thinks of Balls. Torsten Bell, one of Miliband’s most influential aides, calls Balls a ‘nightmare’ and complains about how complicated his message on the economy is. Tellingly, he isn’t rebuked for his tone by the other Miliband advisers on the email.
Extracts from the emails published by the Mail on Sunday today
Considering, though, that on the scale of Miliband Balls differences this one is relatively minor, one wonders what the emails said when Balls was throwing his weight around on HS2.
We all know that Balls was not Miliband’s first choice for the job of shadow Chancellor. We also now have confirmed that the tensions between their two camps remain high. The question is how much of this comes out in the heat and pressure of a general election campaign.
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