Good interview with Ed Balls in today’s G2

By Alex Smith / @alexsmith1982

I saw Ed Balls on Friday. We’d bumped into each other in Westminster and talked for a while about the election, the fallout and the leadership contest.

He seemed a little war-weary, and genuinely upset to be out of government. When I said it could also be a liberation of sorts for former ministers like him – that he would no longer have to be constantly on the defensive and could say more of what he thinks – he seemed to agree. He was calm and happy to be involved in the contest, if a little tired.

So it’s good to see quite a human interview with Balls in today’s G2. Balls admits he’s an underdog in the leadership race, and also that his campaign is coming together slowly but surely:

“It feels like it’s been one long, continuous campaign which has been going on every day since the beginning of January, and it’s moved seamlessly from the general election straight into the leadership campaign. I’ve just gone from one campaign office to another.”

“I need the time to get out there and talk to people. I start as a bit of an underdog, first because I’ve just fought a campaign in a marginal seat, and also because I stayed very loyal to the leadership, which means that I’d not given any flicker of an idea that I was doing anything organisationally in anticipation of defeat or a change of leader.”

It’s a swipe at the frontrunner(s), but it’s not delivered in a nasty way. Rather, it’s in the same philosophical mood Balls showed when I saw him. Well worth reading.