Best of Friends
The two biggest beasts in the Labour Party, Ed Miliband and Ed Balls, have fallen out according to this Guardian report over tax and public spending, and the extent to which markets can or should be controlled by national governments.
While Ed Miliband is busy spraying spending promises around like confetti his shadow chancellor, Ed Balls, is busy trying to dampen these expectations down and letting it be known that he disagreed with his party leader over the great energy 'price freeze' cock-up, for example.
Now while everyone in the Labour Party will insist that the two Eds get on like a house on fire, the fact is they said the same about Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, and just look how that ended up.
The clash of two Eds raises the ghost of Labour past
By Anne McElvoy -The Guardian
A subplot to the election is the rivalry between Miliband and Balls that the former has (so far) won. Ring any bells?
A subplot to the election is the rivalry between Miliband and Balls that the former has (so far) won. Ring any bells?
'Ed Balls and Ed Miliband have different visions of what a progressive economy should look like.' Photograph: Facundo Arrizabalaga/EPA
Two Eds may be better than one, but that is far from apparent from the clashes between Labour’s own Jets and Sharks. Clans that cannot even pretend to be peaceable in the runup to a tightly fought election do not project reassurance. They look a lot like the pre-Cameron Conservative party, in which the unsettled question of where power lay created a mood of unease, punctuated by outbreaks of strife.
The proximate cause of the latest feud is tuition fees, and the small matter of the £2bn needed to fund a proposed cut in the maximum annual fee level to £6,000. Ed Balls is right to question a populist move from a leader worried that he is not truly popular. Similarly dicey logic about the real-world outcomes led Ed Miliband into an unwise commitment to freeze energy prices, just before they tumbled – a plan which Balls opposed, though he lost the argument.
For all the complaints about his abrasiveness, the shadow chancellor he is simply doing his job, which is to warn a leader when their spending plans are irresponsible or counter-productive. What rankles is that the Ballsian method, which as one shadow cabinet member on the receiving end puts it, is “like having your head banged repeatedly on the wall by a school bully”. Balls briefly sought to amend this reputation when he ran for the leadership. He once gave me a heartfelt radio interview in which he suggested, like the character in the Roger Rabbit movie, that he was not so much bad but “just drawn that way”, and that maturity had taken the edge off his rebarbative manner. A senior Labour figure texted afterwards saying drily, “I see Ed’s been to Nice School.”
Nice Ed was not a sustainable brand. And today, Balls’s main enemies, Tristram Hunt and Chuka Umunna, find him aloof and arrogant, with one of their allies telling the Sunday Times that he “doesn’t think anyone else is entitled to have an opinion about money or anything else”. Naturally both are resistant to any raid on their budgets to pay for the tuition fees cut, but that is mainly Miliband’s fault for coming up with it.
Should Miliband lose the election, the fight will begin all over again
Claims that Balls is being “disloyal to the leader’s agenda” are disingenuous. Labour’s modernisers have not got much faith in the “leader’s agenda” either, but they do see in it a golden opportunity to get rid of Balls after the election, by suggesting that he is a bungler. So when the shadow chancellor suggested that we should collect receipts for every hedge trim, support from his own side was tepid. What mattered was not that a senior politician said something daft – they almost all do, if they say anything at all – but whether their colleagues cut them slack afterwards. Balls has run out of slack. Such spasms are symbolic of something else that should worry Labour. A party that could very well end up assuming power in just over two months is displaying its psychological unease, at a time when snarky, self-pre-occupation plays to the voters’ impression that the Westminster set is distant and unappealing.
The ghosts of past rivalries stalk this contest for control of Labour’s future. On the face of it, the latest outbreak looks like the assault of the twitchy neo-Blairites, Umunna and Hunt, on Balls, who was Brown’s spiritual (and economic) successor. Yet it simmers over because Miliband has no intention of defending a key colleague. The two competed for precedence as young advisers under Gordon’s chancellorship: the latter was primus inter pares. Asked which was the more important, Miliband once answered sharply, “Ed (the other one) thinks he is.”
These memories rankle with the Labour leader, who spent many years of his early professional life squeezed between an older brother apparently destined for greatness, and a bolshy competitor who for years swiped him aside. Sweet, therefore, has been his defeat of both rivals for the top job. With some justification, Miliband feels that many have underestimated him. That is a powerful driver of ambition, but one that tends to come flanked with awkwardness and resentment.
In truth, Balls and Miliband do have different visions of what a progressive economy should look like. Miliband has a fundamentally less approving view of the way markets work than many in the Labour centre ground (a whiff of the idealism of an American east coast seminar room is never far off). Balls takes a more pragmatic view that the best way to advance progressive goals is to allow the markets free reign and cream off revenues to use for social gain.
The fees clash crystallises this divergence. Balls thinks it exacerbates the current problem: a shortfall in the money that the Treasury recoups from student loans over decades. He prefers a graduate tax, which has its weaknesses: namely that many will overpay for their higher education. A fondness for yet another tax on professionals does not endear Balls to New Labourites. But if all that is arcane, other flashpoints are not. Miliband’s emphasis on wagging a finger at capitalism irks Balls, who in turn has found it difficult to preach fiscal responsibility, as the unrepentant protege of a high-spending former chancellor. Miliband’s “let’s try everything” approach to environmentalism strikes Balls as scattergun. If Ed-the-leader is an enthusiast for the HS2 rail project, you can be sure that The Other Ed prefers to expand Heathrow.
In the end, these two are bound to clash when it comes to deciding how interventionist the state should be and about what. Even if Balls attended Nice School and got better grades and Miliband grew more forgiving, that gap would still loom.
Whatever happens in May, such a state of affairs cannot hold for much longer. Labour’s leader faces the test that will make or break his career: if he wins, his ascendency over his turbulent colleague will be complete. Having originally spurned him as a shadow chancellor in favour of the less well-qualified but more amiable figure of Alan Johnson, Miliband may well decide that this is the time to say goodbye to his rival and ally. Should Miliband lose, the fight will begin all over again, as a new generation of well-tailored assassins sets out to destroy Balls: the great survivor who now unites both wings of his party in a determination to kill him off.
Two Eds may be better than one, but that is far from apparent from the clashes between Labour’s own Jets and Sharks. Clans that cannot even pretend to be peaceable in the runup to a tightly fought election do not project reassurance. They look a lot like the pre-Cameron Conservative party, in which the unsettled question of where power lay created a mood of unease, punctuated by outbreaks of strife.
The proximate cause of the latest feud is tuition fees, and the small matter of the £2bn needed to fund a proposed cut in the maximum annual fee level to £6,000. Ed Balls is right to question a populist move from a leader worried that he is not truly popular. Similarly dicey logic about the real-world outcomes led Ed Miliband into an unwise commitment to freeze energy prices, just before they tumbled – a plan which Balls opposed, though he lost the argument.
For all the complaints about his abrasiveness, the shadow chancellor he is simply doing his job, which is to warn a leader when their spending plans are irresponsible or counter-productive. What rankles is that the Ballsian method, which as one shadow cabinet member on the receiving end puts it, is “like having your head banged repeatedly on the wall by a school bully”. Balls briefly sought to amend this reputation when he ran for the leadership. He once gave me a heartfelt radio interview in which he suggested, like the character in the Roger Rabbit movie, that he was not so much bad but “just drawn that way”, and that maturity had taken the edge off his rebarbative manner. A senior Labour figure texted afterwards saying drily, “I see Ed’s been to Nice School.”
Nice Ed was not a sustainable brand. And today, Balls’s main enemies, Tristram Hunt and Chuka Umunna, find him aloof and arrogant, with one of their allies telling the Sunday Times that he “doesn’t think anyone else is entitled to have an opinion about money or anything else”. Naturally both are resistant to any raid on their budgets to pay for the tuition fees cut, but that is mainly Miliband’s fault for coming up with it.
Should Miliband lose the election, the fight will begin all over again
Claims that Balls is being “disloyal to the leader’s agenda” are disingenuous. Labour’s modernisers have not got much faith in the “leader’s agenda” either, but they do see in it a golden opportunity to get rid of Balls after the election, by suggesting that he is a bungler. So when the shadow chancellor suggested that we should collect receipts for every hedge trim, support from his own side was tepid. What mattered was not that a senior politician said something daft – they almost all do, if they say anything at all – but whether their colleagues cut them slack afterwards. Balls has run out of slack. Such spasms are symbolic of something else that should worry Labour. A party that could very well end up assuming power in just over two months is displaying its psychological unease, at a time when snarky, self-pre-occupation plays to the voters’ impression that the Westminster set is distant and unappealing.
The ghosts of past rivalries stalk this contest for control of Labour’s future. On the face of it, the latest outbreak looks like the assault of the twitchy neo-Blairites, Umunna and Hunt, on Balls, who was Brown’s spiritual (and economic) successor. Yet it simmers over because Miliband has no intention of defending a key colleague. The two competed for precedence as young advisers under Gordon’s chancellorship: the latter was primus inter pares. Asked which was the more important, Miliband once answered sharply, “Ed (the other one) thinks he is.”
These memories rankle with the Labour leader, who spent many years of his early professional life squeezed between an older brother apparently destined for greatness, and a bolshy competitor who for years swiped him aside. Sweet, therefore, has been his defeat of both rivals for the top job. With some justification, Miliband feels that many have underestimated him. That is a powerful driver of ambition, but one that tends to come flanked with awkwardness and resentment.
In truth, Balls and Miliband do have different visions of what a progressive economy should look like. Miliband has a fundamentally less approving view of the way markets work than many in the Labour centre ground (a whiff of the idealism of an American east coast seminar room is never far off). Balls takes a more pragmatic view that the best way to advance progressive goals is to allow the markets free reign and cream off revenues to use for social gain.
The fees clash crystallises this divergence. Balls thinks it exacerbates the current problem: a shortfall in the money that the Treasury recoups from student loans over decades. He prefers a graduate tax, which has its weaknesses: namely that many will overpay for their higher education. A fondness for yet another tax on professionals does not endear Balls to New Labourites. But if all that is arcane, other flashpoints are not. Miliband’s emphasis on wagging a finger at capitalism irks Balls, who in turn has found it difficult to preach fiscal responsibility, as the unrepentant protege of a high-spending former chancellor. Miliband’s “let’s try everything” approach to environmentalism strikes Balls as scattergun. If Ed-the-leader is an enthusiast for the HS2 rail project, you can be sure that The Other Ed prefers to expand Heathrow.
In the end, these two are bound to clash when it comes to deciding how interventionist the state should be and about what. Even if Balls attended Nice School and got better grades and Miliband grew more forgiving, that gap would still loom.
Whatever happens in May, such a state of affairs cannot hold for much longer. Labour’s leader faces the test that will make or break his career: if he wins, his ascendency over his turbulent colleague will be complete. Having originally spurned him as a shadow chancellor in favour of the less well-qualified but more amiable figure of Alan Johnson, Miliband may well decide that this is the time to say goodbye to his rival and ally. Should Miliband lose, the fight will begin all over again, as a new generation of well-tailored assassins sets out to destroy Balls: the great survivor who now unites both wings of his party in a determination to kill him off.
