“No vacancy” – Miliband confirms Balls will stay as Shadow Chancellor

On this morning’s Andrew Marr show this morning, Ed Miliband (in an interview with James Landale) put to bed rumours that Ed Balls might not be Shadow Chancellor going into the next election, saying:

“There is no vacancy for shadow chancellor.”

“He (Balls) is doing a great job and he is going to continue doing a great job.”

“We have said that we will go into the next election as a team. But what I’m not going to do is start measuring the curtains for Downing Street.”

And referring to the 2010 Bloomberg speech made by Ed Balls, he said:

“He’s the person who said in August 2010, he’s the person who said, ‘Actually, I’m afraid this isn’t going to work, these plans form the Government’. And he turned out to be right. Those kind of good judgments are incredibly important in politics.”

Ed Balls will be Labour’s Shadow Chancellor in 2015, barring any major and unforeseen event.