I’ve interviewed Ed Balls for this week’s New Statesman — out on the newsstands on Thursday.
Here are a few comments from the shadow chancellor that might not make it into the final piece:
1) On the TUC rally and Boris Johnson
The shadow chancellor seemed pretty annoyed with Boris Johnson’s Telegraph column yesterday — on the subject of Saturday’s TUC march and the violent protests — in which the Mayor of London claimed that “Balls and Miliband will feel quietly satisfied by the disorder”:
I thought it was an outrageous thing to say. It was a deeply irresponsible thing to say. I was quite shocked. Boris’s problem is he spends so much time attacking David Cameron that he probably thought he had to attack someone else for a change. He is less of a statesman and more of a buffoon and I think he should withdraw those comments.
Balls, who criticised Sky News for its alleged bias in an interview with me ahead of the 2010 general election, says that he understands the demands of the 24-hour news channels. He is, nonetheless, critical of the media coverage of Saturday’s rally and the decision by the BBC and Sky News to cut away from Ed Miliband’s speech in order to show the protests in Oxford Street:
The idea that a peaceful, broad-based demo of over a quarter of million people should be overshadowed by 200 or so immature idiots is wrong and very frustrating.
Asked if Labour been damaged by Miliband’s decision to address the TUC rally in Hyde Park, Balls says:
You should give the public more credit — the TUC, the marchers and the police were very clear in their public statements about the differences between the two groups.
As for the violent “anarchists” on Oxford Street, Balls says, “They probably hate me and Ed Miliband more than they hate David Cameron and George Osborne.”
2) On Libya and the cost of military action:
Balls supports the military action against the Gaddafi regime but is critical of the Chancellor’s decision to try to predict the costs in advance:
George Osborne was unwise when he said at Treasury questions that this operation would only cost tens of millions of pounds. It shows that he is obviously defensive about the cost. He can’t possibly know that it will only cost tens of millions of pounds; it could turn out to cost much more and go on much longer than he thinks. The right thing to say is that we cannot know the cost. It’s a little like him saying that the economy is “out of the danger zone”.
And in a swipe at the Tories’ analogy of the Budget deficit with a credit-card account, the shadow chancellor adds:
If, two years ago, the credit card had been maxed out, we wouldn’t now be able to go to war in Libya. If the nation was trying to run this war on the basis of its credit card, then it would be in trouble. It just shows what vacuous tosh all that Conservative language is.
You’ll have to wait till Thursday, however, and the publication of the print edition of the magazine to read Balls’s views on Ed Miliband, Alan Johnson, Yvette Cooper and the structural deficit . . .
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