Through the last 20 years of Labour politics, so marked by spin and division, Ed Balls has been a prime culprit. Since losing his seat at the General Election he has been seeking to reinvent himself.
He has sought to counter his reputation as a bully, obsessed with political ambition, with an appearance on Celebrity Bake Off, taking on the chairmanship of Norwich City Football Club, and now being a contestant on BBC entertainment show Strictly Come Dancing.
And there has been his thoroughly revisionist autobiography, Speaking Out. The project amounts to a job application to be a National Treasure. It deserves to be rejected.
The challenge: turn a former Shadow Chancellor into a dancer. @EdBalls and partner @Mrs_katjones step to it… pic.twitter.com/PWwLWBopni
— BBC Strictly✨ (@bbcstrictly) September 12, 2016
What is the point of writing your memoirs if you are not prepared to be candid?
The account Balls gives is so at odds with other accounts of the period that it insults the intelligence of the reader. For example, Balls claims of his relationship with Tony Blair: “Of course, I had my occasional disagreements over policy with Tony, but there was always a mutual respect between us.”
Really? Tony Blair’s spin doctor, Alastair Campbell, writes in a diary entry in 2001: “Over dinner on the plane, TB said he was shocked at how rude Ed Balls was during their discussions on the Budget. Anyone watching would have been hard-pressed to imagine he was the Prime Minister and Balls an aide to one of his ministers.”
According to the leading political biographer Dr Anthony Seldon, the relationship between Balls and Blair did not improve. “I feel like an abused and bullied wife,” said Blair after Balls was “astonishingly rude” to him in 2006 during talks over when he should stand down as PM. Seldon added that Balls regarded Blair as a “moron”.
Then we have the more recent experience of the relationship between Balls and Ed Miliband in the last Parliament. In 2012 there was an interview where Balls was asked about “tensions” in the relationship between the two.
“We spent very little time talking about these stories because they are complete and utter, total garbage,” said Balls. But the two Eds spent very little time talking about anything at all – because the stories were true.
As Labour leader and Shadow Chancellor, they only spoke twice during last year’s General Election campaign. In his memoirs, Balls says he and Miliband had “a working relationship which was professional, disciplined and respectful.” Hmmm.
Balls also says of their failure to communicate during the 2015 election campaign: “That was astonishingly dysfunctional when I compare it to how Tony and Gordon worked.” So a dismal failure even when setting the bar pretty low.
Strictly Come Dancing lesson: Vince Cable and Ed Balls https://t.co/iNOVToAZps
— BBC World Edition (@BBCWorldEdition) September 8, 2016
I suspect that Balls treated Ed Miliband not with respect but with blatant contempt. According to a story in the New Statesman, in 2011 Balls sat sending text messages during a Shadow Cabinet meeting rather than listening to the pronouncements of the Leader.
“I know BlackBerrys are interesting,” said Miliband plaintively, “but so are people”. Balls smiled apologetically and paused for a few moments – before tapping away again.
Even when Balls should be able to win our sympathy for his personal attempts to reach the right judgment, he manages to blow it by exaggerating the case – for instance with regards to the Euro. The spin he puts out was that if it hadn’t been for him the UK would have joined. Certainly Balls was an opponent of joining and when he was at the Treasury he encouraged Gordon Brown to put obstacles in the way.
But the real reason we didn’t join was Sir James Goldsmith. In the 1997 election the Referendum Party campaigned strongly. To thwart them, John Major promised that a Conservative Government would not join the Euro without holding a referendum.
Labour also copied this referendum pledge. Once in Downing Street, Blair would have loved to join the Euro but he knew he couldn’t win a referendum on it regardless of whatever “tests” Balls thought up.
Ed Balls: Gordon Brown emailed to congratulate me on Strictly appearance https://t.co/99yIgaiqJc
— The Guardian (@guardian) September 13, 2016
On the Bank of England’s independence to set interest rates Balls has a stronger claim to having had a key role. But he wasn’t the only one who favoured the idea. As Chancellor of the Exchequer, Norman Lamont tried to bring in the reform but was blocked by John Major. It was a sensible reform that might well have happened regardless of any role that Balls had to play.
As Education Secretary there was a modest achievement for Balls in encouraging more schools to provide breakfast clubs. Good for him. But in his memoirs he has to go and spoil it by pompously talking about it as a “Children’s Plan” and the “Every Child Matters agenda”.
Then there is the internalised stammer that Balls suffers from. Certainly for any job that requires public speaking it took courage to cope with. It must be particularly difficult facing heckling in a packed House of Commons. The difficulty I had, though, with Balls asking for sympathy when he struggled against jeering Tory MPs is the double standard. Balls would shout his head off when it came to
heckling others.
On it goes. There is page after page of self-justificatory, contradictory pleading. But don’t take my word for it. It’s available in all good bookshops for £20. Just don’t expect the authentic Balls or the real story of the Labour Government. He dances around what really happened.
