The Ed Balls Newsnight interview: decide for yourself

Last week, Andy Burnham went head-to-head with Kirsty Wark on BBC’s Newsnight. It set the agenda for the next day, and some reports suggested the interview had been a disaster – but we felt it was only fair to host the video in full and let our readers decide for themselves. It quickly became one of our most read posts of the week.

Today sees a similar story with another shadow cabinet member. Ed Balls was grilled for 11 minutes on Newsnight yesterday on the topic of Labour’s relationship with British businesses, following high-profile attacks on the party by several figures earlier in the week (some of whom were shown to be not exactly impartial).

What has dominated the headlines about this interview has been Balls’ inability to remember the surname of Bill Thomas, chair of Labour’s Small Business Taskforce. Balls took to Twitter immediately after coming off air to apologise to Thomas, and Thomas himself did not seem bothered by the slip-up: he reaffirmed his support for Labour today, while saying he does “have some sympathy with him [Ed Balls] mixing things up.”

Again, you can watch the full interview here and make up your own mind: