David Wearing - You sound like a very angry and bitter man. You are either a Blairite or a Tory.

Your assumtions and personal views of Ed Balls could not be more far from the true. The things you've talked about must have existed in your immagination.

After Ed Balls' demolition of Vince Cable on Question Time last week, he is now my choice to lead the Labour Party.

If you want to know who is the person most feared by the tories or the Liberals then just read the bloggs. Put the names of the two most blogged about in a hat and then do you own home work. Remember the unatributed briefing can come from anyone and any side. Politics is a dirty game and a blood sport...thats why tories study it at grandpa's knee. The first blooding of the fox hunt normaly comes after the first cloaked back stab in the playground.

I reckon it was Michael Gove ;-)

This episode is but one of many to show the plot is not alone in high relative density for all involved in this caravan of mediocrity.

Rachel Sylvester, of course, is famously close to one of the Milibands - I forget which? Ed, I think.

The issue with Balls is not that he's a "tribalist", or whatever. The issue is simply that the man has very poor judgement.

History will see New Labour's two biggest judgement calls as on the course taken by the British economy after the Tory years, and on Iraq.

On the economy, Balls was a key player in Labour's adopting the disastrous neo-liberal, no-touch regulation approach to big finance. This led to the credit crunch, the longest and deepest recession since WWII, and the coming age of austerity. You don't need hindsight to criticise Balls for this. Speculative bubbles are hardly unprecedented, and the political power of the financial industry (now on full display as the poorest are forced to pick up the tab for the bankers greed) was never a secret either. On economics, Balls' judgement was not just predictably wrong but spectacularly costly.

Then there's Iraq. Balls is clear that if he had been an MP in 2003 he would have voted for the war. He gives the standard "if I'd known then what I know now" defence, which frankly, is piss-weak. It was perfectly clear at the time that there was no case for the invasion. Again, Balls' judgement was hopeless.

Have matters improved? I'm not remotely convinced. Practically Balls' first instinct in the current leadership campaign was to indulge in what Jon Cruddas described as "the new, sour, kiss-up, kick-down politics" (not strictly new of course, just standard right-wing territory). Balls moved to appease right-wing sentiment on immigration with, amongst other things, the entirely superfluous assurance that he would oppose mass-immigration from Turkey via the EU. It is a well-known fact that Turkey currently has as much chance of entering the EU as I do of entering Elle MacPherson. Balls making a big show of rallying to the gates of Vienna to ward off a non-existent threat was about as transparent an example of dog-whistle blowing as you're likely to see. It was left to Diane Abbott to adopt the role of the adult, and warn of the real dangers of scapegoating immigrants in a recession. Again, the self-proclaimed "Labour man" badly loses his bearings.

Bizarrely, Balls is sometimes seen, both by supporters and detractors, as being of the genuine left. On what planet does a person of the real left behave in this way?

Now Labour is on the floor, and no-one likes to see the Tories in government acting out their most sordid anti-state (or more accuately, anti-poor) fantasies. So Balls' pugnacious manner is seductive for those who'd love to see the ConDems come a cropper, or at least get properly held to account. On a superficial level, the attraction is understandable. But if the party really wants to move on from the betrayals of New Labour, it needs to look past Balls' manner, look past his ability to tickle the parties' collective tummy when he needs their votes, and take a long, hard look at his lamentable absence of judgement.

Balls is a weirdo!

After Brown, you'd think Labour would want a normal person as their leader!