Ed Balls – know your competition

By Shibley Rahman / @shibleylondon

I would be very surprised if Tom Baldwin and Ed Balls didn’t have a meeting early on to consider how the new Tory Director of Communications might ‘attack’ Ed Balls. The media – both broadsheet and tabloid – have tried to use the simple picture of Ed Balls as a “bruiser”, but it seems that the coalition is taking the line of attack that “you must never put the pyromaniac in charge of fire safety.”

There are some consistent names put forward in the ‘runners and riders’, although some have even fleetingly mooted the idea of Nick Robinson, Laura Kuenssberg and Paul Staines being ideal for the post, which apparently carries a formidable salary of £140K per year.

Here are some observations of the four key favourites.

Guto Harri
Gutto Harri is not overtly political – reflected in the fact that he doesn’t comment much on politics – and is said to be well connected in Conservative circles. Harri went on to notch up 18 years at the BBC, and built up good contacts with some of the Conservative Party’s more gregarious politicians. It has become common knowledge in political circles that Harri was approached last year about becoming the party’s director of communications. According to Tory sources, Harri first spoke to strategy director Steve Hilton and then went to Cameron’s Oxfordshire home to discuss the issue.

George Pascoe Watson
Another candidate is George Pascoe-Watson, the Sun’s former political editor, who left the tabloid after 22 years for public relations in October 2009. His departure came just weeks after the Murdoch-owned newspaper switched allegiance to the Conservative Party and he was one of the paper’s leading spokesmen when it came to explaining the decision.

Benedict Brogan
Benedict Brogan is now the Deputy Editor of The Daily Telegraph and is described as “one of Westminster’s keenest observers”. His range of analysis across a number of diverse political areas is indeed remarkable.

Ian Birrell
Ian Birrell is a former deputy editor of the Independent and worked as a speechwriter for David Cameron during the 2010 election campaign. If Cameron wishes to have a robust defence of marketisation, and portray the state as ‘evil and bulky’, Birrell is perhaps his man. If he wants to counter the argument that Balls will produce as to why the current Tory policy may produce a lower GDP, increased unemployment and a declining growth, Birrell (and indeed Pascoe-Watson) may not be suitable.

The economy and the NHS are going to be defining issues for Miliband, Balls and Baldwin in the next few years.