The diamond candidate has emerged

By Jim Knight

Last week I was given a copy of “The Audacity to Win” by David Plouffe, the campaign manager for Obama for America. Plouffe recalls one colleague commenting in late 2006 about joining Obama’s Presidential campaign. The colleague said:

“Let me get this straight, we should work for the candidate with no chance, no money, and the funny name.”

This was rather how I felt less than two months ago when thinking about joining Ed Balls’s campaign to become the next leader of the Labour Party – the closest this country gets to a US Presidential race.

At that time I was reeling from defeat as part of Labour’s annihilation in the South. Ed is a close friend but I was struggling to see how we could turn around his image in the right wing press, and his ties to Gordon, sufficiently for him to be judged for who he really is – the best candidate to lead our party and our country.

The fact that, unlike other candidates, he had no campaign infrastructure and no money didn’t help. The funny name was the least of our problems.

Now we are in a completely different place. Unlike others, we don’t have the money to employ staff in big offices – it is very much a grassroots volunteer-run campaign. We’ve not been working on it for months and so we are still running to catch up, as we still see in the race to pile up nominations.

Without the big campaign infrastructure of the established candidates we’ve had to be smarter and make sure we do what we can to the highest quality. The website was late but great. The leaflets took a while but are really well received. We are starting to raise the money we need.

But what is really giving us the momentum is our candidate.

I’ve known Ed well for the last three years as my Secretary of State and then as the husband of my Secretary of State.

Previously I wasn’t sure about him; I was from the Blairite wing of the party, and I was expecting a difficult authoritarian boss. What I got was someone fiercely intelligent, and also emotionally intelligent, with extraordinary strategic insights and a genial inclusive style. It is no coincidence that almost everyone who has worked for him as a minister or PPS is now part of the campaign; the loyalty he shows others has in turn inspired loyalty and belief in those that know him.

I’ve seen him grow and develop in the last three years. His communication skills are transformed. The same determination to overcome a childhood stammer has combined with a willingness to listen to advice on how to perform better. His development over three years working for and with children, particularly children with disabilities, has seen Ed emerge as effective in meetings with young mothers as he is with ministers from abroad.

He is not one to bottle the tough decisions either. I wasn’t there when he battled to keep us out of the Euro but I was when he coped under pressure with the Baby Peter tragedy in Haringey. Despite the media storm he waited whilst a proper independent review was carried out before acting decisively. I was also there when he decided not to duck the difficult issue of unfair school admissions, even if it meant discomfort for faith schools.

But what has now impressed me immeasurably is how he’s grown during the leadership campaign.

Not only has he shown he has the best understanding of the defining policy areas of the economy and public services.

Not only is he flourishing in the hustings, but he is now consistently seen as one of the heavyweights who has the skills and command of detail to do the job. Ed’s backers are choosing him because they know he can do the job, not by process of elimination.

Crucially for me he understands the South. The Medway towns, Dover, Portsmouth, Weymouth, Camborne, Swindon, Ipswich, Basildon and his native Norwich are not going to be won back with the politics of Primrose Hill. These are working towns with the concerns of working people – law and order, jobs, housing and good public services.

His media appearances on Newsnight, Question Time, Andrew Marr and many others have shown he is now in the premier league of political communicators.

He’s emerged as the most effective campaigner. His campaigns on free school meals, on a Diversity Fund to help underrepresented groups and then on the VAT rise have been widely supported by local government and trade unions as well as in the party. The VAT campaign has now been adopted by the party as its main summer campaign.

But what has really set Ed Balls apart from the others is the effective way he has opposed Michael Gove’s attack on the school building programme.

He has grasped the detail to expose the shambles and inaccuracies in what Gove has told parliament. He found a style in parliament and on television that demonstrates his passion for children and education, and that is the perfect contrast for the nauseating Gove. He has forced Gove into the most humiliating apology we’ve seen in parliament for many years.

The Tory pinup boy has been humbled and discredited in one short week.

Ed is now clearly the best candidate to take the fight to the Tories. He is the one to dismantle the ConDem coalition and prevent them seeing out the five years they want of this parliament. He is also now the best to lead the party through the election that follows and return the party to power.

I believe he can and will win. I am not alone. The three electoral colleges are very hard to predict, but having moved in many peoples’ minds from nowhere to second or first choice the penny is beginning to drop about Ed Balls.

This race has a candidate that can beat the Tories, who will shorten the life of this government, is rooted in Labour and co-operative values, and can even overcome his funny name.

This post was first published at Think Politics.