“Now he and his leader know what it’s like to be people’s second
choice,” trilled George Osborne during his recent encounter with Ed Balls over the dispatch
box. But might Balls actually have been Miliband’s third choice for the shadow chancellorship? That’s the implication of a delicious little story in today’s Sun, which claims that
Miliband first “tapped up” his brother, aka MiliD, when trying to replace Alan Johnson:
“A Labour insider revealed: ‘Ed’s people were desperate not to give the job to Balls.’
However, Ed stopped short of offering his brother the job when David made it clear he wanted to stay on the backbenches.”
If true, then it’s revealing on two counts. First, it suggests that Ed Miliband is going out of his way to cool the simmering resentment between his supporters and those of his brother. Second, that Ed Miliband was keen to stick by the Darling Plan for halving the deficit over four years – espoused by Johnson and MiliD, among others – rather than shift towards the Ballsonomics of this infamous speech.
On paper, at least, Miliband still has the Darling Plan – but, then, he also has Balls. Will the latter undermine the former in a way that MiliD wouldn’t have? Answers on a postcard, please.
UPDATE: While we’re on the subject of Ed Miliband, there’s this from Kevin Maguire’s New Statesman column:
“I hear that Ted [Ed Miliband] was granted a cosy chat with the Sun’s editor, Dominic Mohan, and the Wapping dominatrix Rebekah Brooks. My snout in Fortress Wapping suggests that, next time, Ted should remember that the Sun was launched in 1964 and avoid asking how it covered events in the 1940s and 1950s; he should also avoid asking the childless Brooks how her kids are. I’m told it could have gone better.”
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