Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Balls plays politics

“Cameron anger at Baby P” read the Evening Standard billboards in Westminster, setting the tone of the news coverage until about now. Now, all of a sudden, a full independent review has been announced by Ed Balls – rather rapid response, seeing as Mr Brown wasn’t able to announce or even hint at this at PMQs earlier. “That wouldn’t have been the right thing to do” Balls said – I mean, heaven forbid such announcements are made to Parliament. Balls continued:

“We received the summary document [on the Baby P case] at 10am this morning. We studied this, and over the course of today we concluded this afternoon that over a proper reading we should now act.”

Bunkum. Baby P died on 3 August 2006. While there were newspaper reporting restrictions due to the trial, Balls could have found out any detail he wanted at any time. If he didn’t know every detail, he certainly should have done. It’s simple: No10 had been preparing for unemployment to be the story, they got it wrong, thought the Tories would run away with the news agenda so wheeled out a full investigation just in time for the evening television news. Playing politics? Absolutely.

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