Let’s rewind back to this morning, and Ed Balls’ appearance on the Today progamme. It was such a classic demonstration of distortion and buck-passing, that we’ve decided to give it a fisk, Coffee House style. Here’s the transcript, with our thoughts added in italics:
James Naughtie: Talking about bad behaviour, there’s been a bit of it going on in government, hasn’t there?
Ed Balls: Well, I’ve, um, seen the reports in the Sunday Times on Sunday and I think those emails were vile, horrible, despicable. I think there’s no place in politics for that kind of stuff. I think it’s awful.
Fraser Nelson: Balls is shocked, shocked to find it going on.
JN: You must feel this quite, er, personally. You had a very close working relationship with Damian McBride, both in the Treasury and subsequently, didn’t you? I mean, you knew him very well.
EB: I worked with him in the Treasury and, um, I obviously worked with, um, all the people in Downing Street as we all did as Cabinet Ministers.

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