How to kill, rather than save, a premiership

There’s something grimly hilarious about the frontpage headline of the Sunday Times today: “Gordon Brown wants Ed Balls as Chancellor”.  Sure, we’ve known that for years, but now it sounds as though the Dear Leader may actually be on the verge of making it happen.  The story goes on refer to a “top-level leak” from Downing St, saying that Brown wants the move to be the “centrepiece” of a “sweeping rehsuffle” designed to “restore Labour’s political fortunes”.

The stupidity of it almost doesn’t bear thinking about.  After all, Balls is hardly the most popular figure with either the public or his own colleagues.  Let’s not forget that this is the man who devised much of the regulatory and fiscal framework which has dragged the country into economic hell.  This is the man who, since becoming a minister, has been involved in cock-up after cock-up: in my view, both the exam-marking