There’s a story in The Sun(£) today that suggests Ed Balls has been “sidelined” by the party ahead of the election campaign. The Murdoch-owned red-top even went as far as asking people to “spot the Balls”.
Now since we never knowingly shirking a challenge, we’ve set out to find out where Ed Balls has been this week. In truth, it wasn’t very hard, because even a quick scan of Twitter, the papers or blogs would suggest the Sun are talking cobblers about the Labour Party (for a change):
On Monday morning the Shadow Chancellor launched a report at the FT offices in London with former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers.
On Tuesday he was in Aberdeen with Jim Murphy discussing the future of the North Sea Oil industry – before continuing to hide in plain sight by appearing on The World At One.
On Wednesday we remember seeing Balls sat next to Ed Miliband at PMQs before doing a 1 hour national radio phone-in on LBC, where (as we reported) he challenged George Osborne to a live TV debate:
On Thursday and Friday he was visiting key seats in the South West (a word for some of our friends in the press, visits to key seats are known as “campaigning” and usually happen outside of SW1).
Today Balls was banging the drum on NHS funding in the Guardian.
We’ve found Ed Balls for The Sun. What do we win…?
More from LabourList
What are Labour MPs reading, watching and listening to this Christmas?
‘Musk’s possible Reform donation shows we urgently need…reform of donations’
Full list of new Labour peers set to join House of Lords