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Labour's facebook fan base?

(Hat tip: Tory Bear)

Fisking Ed Balls's personal page

 

As part of a post on the Labour Party's internal difficulties, Fraser Nelson provides a link to the personal page of Ed Balls. Not a site I normally find myself attracted to.

It is a spectacularly lame document. But interesting nonetheless.

Its start is unexceptional:

Ed Balls was elected Labour and Co-operative MP for the Normanton constituency on 5 May 2005. He was appointed Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families in June 2007 and was previously Economic Secretary to the Treasury.

Then the spin begins:

An active member of Unite, Unison and the Co-operative Party, before his election to Parliament he was proud to be in public service as Economic Adviser to Gordon Brown MP and Chief Economic Adviser to the Treasury.

Why is Ed Balls an active member of two trade unions? Why would a Secretary of State who has only ever been a journalist and a political adviser, be a member of two trade unions that have nothing to do with journalism? And what does he mean active - what exactly is it that he does? He is hardly Miriam Carlin in the Rag Trade.

I note, incidentally, that he leaves out his period as a journalist altogether. Why?

His description of his period as Labour research assistant to the Shadow Chancellor as "public service" is simultaneously defensible and ridiculous.

He continues: 

At the Treasury his job was to advise on government economic policy including Bank of England independence, the Windfall tax, the New Deal for jobs and the Winter Fuel Allowance.

He left out the huge public spending spurt and saying that boom and bust had ended.

Ed is determined to fight to win more skilled jobs for our district. He wants to see more police on the beat and a fair deal for pensioners. Living locally, a dad with three kids, he knows we need more high-quality childcare which local families can afford.

How does one fight to win more skilled jobs for the district? How would fighting help? What does he mean fighting to get skilled jobs? And who does he fight with? The Prime Minister?

Finally we get this:

Ed comes from a Labour family. It was the welfare state, created by a Labour government in 1945, which enabled his father - from a widowed family in a working class community - to get a scholarship to University.

He is married to Yvette Cooper, the MP for Pontefract and Castleford. They have three children – Ellie, Joe and Maddy - and live in Castleford.

If you don't believe in inheritance, why does it matter that you come from a Labour family? But if you do, then this is hardly a rounded portrait. His father's background is described, but not his own - the private school educated son of a distinguished scientist who taught at Eton.

I'm also bemused at his second mention of having three children, although perhaps the earlier mention of three kids referred to a collection of three pet goats.

What is my point? That there is nothing wrong with Ed Ball's real background. That he could be perfectly proud of it. And that his attempt to make himself sound as if he is a working class union leader is absurd and depressing.

Ian Austin, comedy genius

This is the best ever Ministerial reply. Pressed on the few people taking up the Government's mortgage assistance scheme, the BBC reports that:

Ian Austin, the housing minister, promised MPs: "The impact of the scheme is accelerating." He said the number of families helped by the measure had risen from two to six during May.

Mr Austin's comic impact was increased by the fact that he wasn't intending to make a joke, thus ensuring that deadpan delivery.

Exchange: Building Britain's Future

From: Daniel Finkelstein
To: Philip Collins

There are lots of ways of reading Building Britain’s Future. A cobbled together mish-mash of old policies, a surrender by the Brownites to the Blair policies they resisted, an ambitious agenda, an ambitious agenda built on a gigantic lie about public spending.

How was it for you, Phil?

From: Philip Collins
To: Daniel Finkelstein

Well, all of those are true. There are some good things in it but it is dripping with unintended irony. I'm sure, in the last days of Major, you found yourself writing sentences like "and in 2002 we will ensure that the potential of every child is realised...." Well, there is plenty of that. 

But, look past that and what is there of enduring value? There is an interesting case that government should take an active role in ensuring that new industries emerge - that may be wrong but at least it's a thesis.

And the public services chapter tries to shift the argument from targets to entitlements. It is weaker on how such entitlements should be enforced. In the end that will lead you back to the sort of policies that the Brownites resisted for so long.

From: Daniel Finkelstein
To: Philip Collins

Assuming that Labour is not about to win a new majority, what is the likely fate of these ideas? Is it likely that they will form the base for future Labour thinking, or that they will be identified as the sort of thing that led Labour to defeat?

Who really feels ownership of these ideas? Is it correct to think of them as coming from Mandelson and Byrne? Or have they come up higgledy-piggeldy from Departmental waste paper bins?

From: Philip Collins
To: Daniel Finkelstein

The entitlement idea actually comes from Tony Wright. I think the Labour party likes the idea of granting rights which are better described as phrases with the form of "it would be nice to have x..."

It doesn't like what you have to do to enforce those rights. So, you can offer a right to treatment within a certain period. But will the Labour party stomach the corollary - that you can then go private if the NHS fails you?

Some of these ideas might end up as Tory policy once Andrew "Dobson" Lansley has got out of the way.

Why Brown wanted Balls to be Chancellor

Listening to the extraordinary performance of Ed Balls this morning - as shameless a piece of political nonsense as I have ever sat through - I suddenly understood the importance of the botched reshuffle.

Ed Balls's desire to be Chancellor may have been personal, but Gordon Brown's desire to accede to this request wasn't.

He needed Balls as Chancellor if he was to pursue, with any chance of success, his chosen cuts v investment campaign.

As Chancellor Balls would have acted entirely politically. He would have done anything to provide the figures that could sustain the campaign. His only financial objective would have been to put pressure on the Tories. He would have used his authority and Treasury support to make cuts v investment seem real.

So Brown needed to make this move. When he failed he didn't just disappoint his chum. He badly damaged his campaign.

At least until the PBR in the autumn, if not beyond, Alistair Darling will try to be a real Chancellor. And a real Chancellor can't possibly subscribe, at least not without many large caveats, to the fraudulent campaign Brown is trying to run. 

Labour MPs to make radical pledge...

... to be honest and, erm, talk to their constituents.

The pledge:

The Labour Party is a great movement for change, made up of people determined to serve the public interest and not their own.

I seek elected office for the honour of serving the public and our democracy;

I will subscribe to high standards of integrity, transparency, accountability and prudence with public money;

I will publish online my full salary and parliamentary allowances;

I believe it a duty to hold regular meetings, engagement events and surgeries with my community and constituents and will do so;

I will communicate regularly with my electorate and will be available through email, telephone and other means to my constituents;

I will regularly report back to my constituency party as well as to my constituents

(Hat tip: Paul Waugh)

MacBride, McBride... What's in name?

Over at Political Betting, Mike Smithson writes:

James Forsyth at the Spectator Coffee House blog is running a report that there are unconfirmed reports that the disgraced Number 10 spin doctor and former right hand man to the PM, Sean McBride, is “actively working for Labour again”.

Really? Sean McBride? As in, the 1974 Nobel Peace Prize Winning Sean MacBride? 

Ahem...

Sean MacBride: 1974 Nobel Peace Prize winner

Damian McBride: ‘divisive and ruthless political assassin’

Liam Byrne's confused argument

Guido publishes Liam Byrne's operational notes for an off again, on again press briefing. Without going into the arrangements, I was intrigued by this:

Liam Byrne MP, Labour’s Chief Secretary to the Treasury, sets out the choice facing voters between investment under Labour and cuts under the Conservatives.

The economic landscape is more uncertain than it has been for generations. But irrespective of what happens over the coming years, David Cameron – Mr 10% – wants to spend less than Labour and give £200,000 tax cuts to the 3,000 richest families.

Mr Byrne - clearly incapable of the mendacity required simply to claim that the Tory figures differ from Labour's - is here making a novel argument. He is saying that the choice is not, as Mr Brown would have it, investment versus cuts. It is complete uncertainty versus cuts.

He is suggesting that the Tories are wrong to commit themselves to the Government figures, because the economic situation might change.

What the Chief Secretary seems to be suggesting here, is that we might still be in such a poor state economically in a couple of years time that we should not, even then, start reducing the deficit.

We can see from this - as surely can Liam Byrne, since he is an intelligent, meticulous person - what a mess this whole line of argument is getting Labour into. They are telling the markets that they have a deficit resuction plan, while arguing in public that the very idea of a deficit reduction plan is wrong.

UPDATE: Paul Waugh has just posted a fantastic blog on Michael Gove taking on Liam Byrne on Radio 4... 

 

Why I want to be Speaker

Margaret Beckett explains her reasons for standing….

Reshuffle - the full (and final?) list

The full list of reshuffled government ministers has just been released. Peruse it here...