Ed Balls: I don’t think a double dip is the most likely outcome

And this, folks, is a day where Ed Balls is having his cake and eating it too. Not only is he basking in the grim light of the growth figures, but he is using the opportunity to recast his own stance on the economy. Speaking on the Daily Politics just now, he de-emphasised the argument that in-year cuts were to blame for today’s numbers, instead claiming that people have “changed their behaviour in anticipation of what’s coming in the future.” And, more ear-catching still, he added:

“I don’t think [a double dip] is the most likely outcome.”

This, as Fraser suggested earlier, is surely necessary caution on Balls’s part. He can’t go too far with the dread warnings, lest the economy pick up again next quarter.

Yet the repositioning act isn’t without embarrassment for Balls now. When pressed by Andrew Neil on whether he ever disagreed with the Darling plan for deficit reduction, Balls claimed that he hadn’t – admitting only that he “feared” it would be difficult to implement. But here’s the relevant passage from his Bloomberg speech last year:

“I told Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling in 2009 that – whatever the media clamour at the time – even trying to halve the deficit in four years was a mistake. The pace was too severe to be credible or sustainable.”

I’ll let CoffeeHousers decide whether that’s disagreeing with Darling, or not.