Commentators have recently taken to suggesting that Ed Balls could be replaced as shadow chancellor before the next election, with David Miliband and Alistair Darling touted as possible replacements. The latest round of speculation began after Balls revealed that Miliband hadn’t guaranteed his position. He told the Times (£): “I’ve never asked him. It’s a bit arrogant thinking about what sort of job you do.”
In tomorrow’s issue of the NS, Kevin Maguire offers a spirited defence of the shadow chancellor and reveals that Balls would “retire to the back benches rather than swallow demotion to another portfolio”. He also reports that Miliband would “face a revolt by MPs if he offered the post a third time to his big brother, David”. Here’s the story in full.
The political “advice” to Ed Miliband to reshuffle the bruiser Ed Balls out of the shadow chancellorship is naked special pleading by the Tory camp and Labour’s Blairite rump. Balls repeatedly hurts the Conservatives. He predicted that austerity would create a double-dip recession and is smart at opposition guerrilla tactics, proposing that money saved on the Olympics should be siphoned off to cancel a petrol-tax rise. His biggest rave reviews are from David Cameron, who has abused Balls as a “muttering idiot” and “the most annoying person in modern politics”: backhanded compliments from Flashman.
Both Eds insist that there’s no deal to keep Balls in the Treasury brief, yet Miliband would face a revolt by MPs if he offered the post a third time to his big brother, David. Allies of the shadow chancellor whisper that he’d take his bat and balls away and retire to the back benches rather than swallow demotion to another portfolio.
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