The case against…Ed Balls

By Hopi Sen / @hopisen

A brief series where, for my own amusement (and possibly ensuring I never work for the Labour Party again), I set out the case against each of the Leadership candidates. The eleventh commandment of internal elections is “Never speak ill of a fellow party member”. It gets broken just as regularly as the other ten, but I shall try to be constructive, not merely critical.

Here’s an odd thing. When I ask Labour members who they’ve been most impressed with during the leadership campaign, who’s done most to improve how they’re seen, the answer is almost always – Ed Balls.

Again, when I ask people whose performance at husting most impressed them, the answer is again – Ed Balls. When I ask who’s done best in opposition? Ed Balls.

Yet very rarely do those same people said they’re voting for Ed Balls.

It’s just not even possible for them to consider him.

Why?

In essence, Ed Balls: candidate for Labour leader is a victim of the reputation of Ed Balls: consigliere.

Balls posesses intelligence, ambition, aggression and focus. These are fantastic qualities in a leader of the opposition and Ed Balls has them in spades.

We’re seeing this in the campaign. The way Balls is dismembering Michael Gove’s hurried academies programme is turning Gove’s tenure at education into something of a blood sport.

Yes, Balls is being helped by errors at education, but in turn those errors are being produced by a department harried and harrassed by an opposition team that knows where the government’s weak spot is – the difference between the promise of reform and the reality of change and cuts – and has the passion and energy to exploit it.

Sure, he can be a bit direct, his interviews a little like a tank rumbling forward to shell enemy territory, but that’s working for him at the moment.

No, the case against Ed Balls isn’t about his quality as a candidate, but his history as an adviser to, and ministerial ally of, Gordon Brown.

Ed rose to prominence as a smart, abrasive enforcer. He left a few bruises on the way. In his own ministerial career, Ed was equally tough minded and willing to put the screws on colleagues he thought were wrong.

Often he was right. (We probably did need a bigger stimulus package in 2008-09). Other times, it was a political mistake. (Alistair Darling was essential to the Labour Party, so trying to pull him down on the one he got marginally wrong was an error.)

As a result of this hurly-burly past, what Ed Balls doesn’t have is a positive public image. This is what is fatally crippling his candidacy,

Ed Balls is seen, certainly by the media, as the champion of a group within the Labour Party that has become more and more unpopular.

Many members now want to take a break from that past. Even if they don’t want to take a break from the last leadership, they suspect that the media will attack us for sticking with a failed strategy if we don’t.

For others, (and I suspect, without any evidence, that some union leaders feel this way) the prospect of negotiating with David or Ed Miliband is far more attractive than negotiating with Ed Balls. This is a backhanded compliment. Ed Balls is a plenty tough negotiator who knows unions strengths and vulnerabilities. Are the Milibands?

The worry that Ed Balls’ image would lead him to be a permanently hobbled opposition leader is made even more acute by the fact Gordon Brown suffered precisely that fate in government – and even his closest advisers couldn’t find a way out of it. If they couldn’t change Gordon’s image, how can they change Ed’s?

I sometimes think Ed Balls suffers the same problem Michael Portillo would have faced if he’d kept his seat in 1997. He has the intellectual firepower and drive to address the problems of the Labour Party, but due to his allegedly factional past, he is politically compromised.

So if the problem for Ed Balls in the present, is the past of Ed Balls, what of the future?

Portillo solved his problem by making TV programmes about poverty, Spain and Train journeys. He had the luxury of rebuilding his image, so by the time he returned to parliament he was no longer Portillo: bowl haired Thatcherite “bastard”, but Portillo: ambassador of tolerant, compassionate conservatism. (Unfortunately, the Conservative parliamentary party wasn’t quite ready for that change. It was their mistake.)

So what can Ed Balls do? Well, assuming he doesn’t win this election, he’ll defintely be offered a major shadow cabinet role. He could then keep on taking the fight to the Tories. He’d do an excellent job.

But here’s another suggestion. When he get’s that offer, he should consider saying “Thanks, but No”. He might even consider suggesting that his wife takes the lead role politically as shadow chancellor.

This would do several things. First it would remove the idea that Ed Balls is destined to be “Gordon Brown” to a greater or lesser Miliband’s “Blair”.

Next, It would show Balls is not self focussed and is willing to let others have the limelight. He would get plaudits from commentators for recognising the his wife’s talent, and being willing to defer to it. It would, at a stroke, remove the poison from the Ed Balls brand. Polly Toynbee would have some sort of ecstatic revelation. Even Allegra Stratton would have to write something nice.

Third, voluntarily stepping away from frontline politics for a while would allow him to gradually rebuild his public and media image, allowing him to display his intellectual, not his street-fighting, skills. Having turned down a good offer, Ed would be in demand by the media as a respected commentator and observer.

Fourth, being away from frontline politics might also allow him to explore issues that are important to Lib Dems, as part of building a true “progressive” future. Tom Watson has said some interesting things about how important this work will be for the future of the Labour Party, and he’s right. Ed could help explore issues of poverty, liberty and community – if he’s not having to attack Danny Alexander every day.

Perhaps he could make a TV programme about poverty, or banking collapses, or the challenges of people trying to find work or decent housing. If he doesn’t want to do that – or it feels too frivolous -, perhaps a step away from the frontline to develop thinking on economic challenges twenty years hence, based on the experience of people today.

Finally, In two or three years time, Labour will likely be crying out for a politician who’s connected with attitudes beyond Westminster, is known to be a strong fighter in opposition, and has a media profile that goes beyond the grind of opposition.

Then the Labour Party would be begging Ed to return to the fight, and perhaps, after that, to the leadership.

Who knows. Perhaps I’m talking rubbish.

For now though, Labour Party members seem willing to admire the talent, but remarkably unwilling to vote for the man.

In other words, They see Ed Balls as a valuable asset, but somehow as a tarnished brand.

That’s what has to change.

So, while the Labour Party needs Ed Balls a lot now and we should want him ripping up the Tory front bench, shouldn’t he at least consider the possibility that we’d get a lot more out of him if he chose a different path for a year or two?

An addendum: By the way, I tend to think that Ed Balls was and is as much briefed against as briefing. If you don’t develop your own network of confidants and colleagues, you risk being boxed in by those who can have a quiet word with the political editor of the BBC or the editor of the Sun. Certainly others suffered that fate.

That doesn’t excuse some of the nasty infighting of the high New Labour era, but it does help explain it. Remember the fates of David Clark and Gavin Strang?

No? Precisely.

Hopi Sen also blogs here.