That Ed Balls leadership bid video

The background on the video is on the post below.
ND beat me to it.



And if you don't know the original soundtrack its from a classic Robert Redford movie about politics, government and betrayal.

An Awful Lot of Balls

Ed Balls is putting himself about, as a cursory glance at the interweb will confirm.  Lots of different topics, lots of different themes.  Health service, education, infrastructure, Tory election tactics, Britain in Europe, devolution, Gary Barlow (sic) ... and that's just the last couple of days.  Well, it's election year and a shadow chancellor is expected to bestir himself, I'm sure.

And the magisterial tone.  "Ed Balls cannot guarantee that Labour will protect university funding" - so Tristram Hunt better not get ahead of himself, eh?  Which then forces "Ed Miliband to delay tuition fee policy".   Hmm, I wonder who's calling the shots there, eh?

We can readily identify when this frenzy of briefing commenced: 17th January 2015.

"Harman and Balls win fight to sit at Labour’s election top table: Ed Miliband’s election team relocate from the House of Commons to the party’s HQ to prepare for May poll.  Harriet Harman and Ed Balls have forced themselves on to Labour’s general election 'top table', after a ferocious power struggle within the party’s high command."

But somehow, Hattie hasn't been quite so busy.  Still, you can't object to a hyperactive shadow chancellor in election year, still less slap him down ...

Is this a leadership bid ?  Does Mr Balls, onetime dean of the Gordon Brown Academy of Political Strategy, see the prospect of a vacancy later in the year ?    Might this all become a self-fulfilling prophesy ?  Oh yes, I think so.

ND

So where is the Laffer curve or the alternative to 50% taxes?

Ed Balls has bought out that good old political trick of higher taxes on the wealthy. As we all know, taxes on someone else are always a vote winning idea.

As the saying goes, if you rob Peter to pay Paul, you can normally rely on Paul's vote come an election.

What is harder to dispute is that 50% is above the Laffer curve. the report from the Treasury thus far is pretty inconclusive. Due to people shifting their incomes, in collusion with their companies, in 201/12, there is little real data to work on. We don't really know if lowering the tax threshold raised more money or not. Equally, due to the timing int he middle of a dreadful recession where tax receipts collapsed, we don't really know if it raised any either. Truthfully too, no one knows where the Laffer curve is or if it even exists; if it did real events will always interfere to skew the results anyhow.

The best that can be said is that in the round of £600 billion odd of public spending, the difference is a rounding error. But of course, politically, this is a good old piece of divisive us-against-them vote-winning.

For Labour, it smacks of desperation as they are opposed to every cut so need some sort of veneer to say they would raise revenue. For the Tories, they are left on the side of big business and 'the rich' - a homely pace but not one packed with voters (although election funding is at least sorted!).

Worse news for those of us who want to vote UKIP. Their policy of a flat tax has also had real problems in the real world. Most of the EU Countries who have applied it also have an equivalent of National Insurance too. Except that the NI is often 30%+, so the nice flat tax of 10% ends up equating to 40% odd anyway.

You just can't escape the need to tax in Countries where social spending is so high and increasing all the time as the population grows and ages.

Personally, I think this is great politics from Labour - useless economic policy, but then they have that mark anyway, it hardens their anti-rich vote which outside of SE England is the key to power for them.

Labour Party plan to ape Tory "austerity-lite"

By the standards of June, when nothing much can tends to happen as people start to enjoy the weather in the UK and stop thinking of ways to upset everyone else, there is a small political bomb being planted today.

Led by the combustible Ed, a speech is being made now at Reuters that suggests an incoming Labour administration in 2015 will be an austerity government. With a pitch that seems to clash badly with previous positions, Labour are to note that there won't be any money left and most departmental spending will have to continue to come down.

Furthermore there are gimmicky ideas on tax raising such as reducing winter fuel payments for elderly relatives and also increasing the whole bankers bonus tax. These two idea raise in the grand scheme of things next to nothing in real revenues, but help to position Labour firmly on one side of the class war they are so intent on continuing.

It is far from certain that Mr Balls will ever get any economic credibility. It is a strange world in that both Osborne and Balls are in dire need of replacement by their party leaders, yet neither one has the courage or political capital to act.

In the longer term, this is quite a shrewd move by Labour. For on most other policy fronts they lead the Tories by a healthy margin. If they can get some ground back by promising Tory economic policy only from them, just as they did in 1997, then this could prove to be a turning point in their fortunes.

The Tories though will be able to point to their flip-flopping (whilst carefully ignoring their own implementation of plan B rather than A). Interestingly the truth is that both leading parties have almost the same ideas on the economy now, both seeking an austerity-lite package. The opportunity for the Liberals and UKIP to offer a different package is their for them to seize.

Defending Ed Balls for Chancellor..

In 2007 Ed Balls was an outside bet to be made Chancellor of the Exchequer in the new government of all the talents. A massive promotion for the most junior of Treasury Ministers . But Balls had long been a loyal apparatchik to the great helmsman.

Commentators thought he would be a disaster. Despite being a better economist and a better politician than Darling, he suffered the exact same lack of communication and lack of empathy and personal skills and boorishness that afflicted his master. He also possessed the same tribalism, bias, partisan party loyalty and above all arrogance. The city thought little of him.
John Rentoul at the Independent, almost alone,wrote that Balls should be Chancellor. Iain Dale had a nice line on Rentoul's piece.

" Rentoul comes up with all sorts of historical justifications for it, all sorts of quotes praising Mr Balls and meets all the objections to him head on, bar one. And that is that Ed Balls is, well, a bit rubbish."

It was rumoured that it was Balls/Cooper who were pushing Gordon Brown to call the earliest of early elections. They would capitalise on a Tory government in disarray, a honeymoon period, the defeat of the Blairites, the removal of Blair himself and gaining from a big bounce in the polls.
In the end it proved a poor decision that began the demise of Brown.
However this should not detract from the fact that Ed Balls was right. Brown should have called an election. It would have headed off a lot of the problems he faces today.
Balls understands strategy.

Balls has developed. He has powerful contacts. Look at how little his own second home claims have featured. The Mackay/Kirkbrides hounded from office. Balls/Cooper barely rates a mention. That is not an accident. Its contacts. The Times ran "ED BALLS, the schools secretary, used Damian McBride,to smear ministerial rivals and advance his own ambitions," Anyone remember? Did it harm him? Ed Balls has that political savvy.

As the schools minister he said sorry for baby P, way, way in advance and at odds with the PM. Minutes before at PMQ's Cameron was actually flinging papers in anger at Brown for his lack of human feeling over the death of the child. Gordon Brown wouldn't say sorry. He accused Cameron of making political capital from the death. The Prime minister gave one of his worst ever, slab faced, boring, robotic, unsympathetic readings of a prepared statement. {youtube pmq's 12/11/08}.
Ed Balls has said sorry many times. And said it with enough contition for it sound genuine.

Ed Balls has not had much success as Schools Minister. The Sats for 14 years olds disaster. The pointless "parenting contracts" , the lack of funding for 17, 18 years olds staying in school. "So What?" The list is long, the successes few, the failures many.

But Ed Balls is a political animal in the same mould, from the same streets as Brown, McBride, Watson and Campbell.. At this time, at the end of this government, this is probably what Brown needs. He has lost his street bruisers. His whips aren't whipping. McBride has gone.Tom watson is going. He needs a powerful brawler. Someone who knows that if the ship sinks, then he sinks with it. Politically its just the right thing to do. Brown's enemies are plotting. Upsetting Blairites and backbenchers is hardly a problem now. Its scorched earth time. Alistair Darling finally defies the PM at the last budget and said NO." No, there is no more money. No more money for 20 years!"Ed Balls may not be so worried about finding some stimulus money and the Prime Minister has an opportunity to tip Mr Darling into a face saving, "reward for a tough job" position at the recently vacant Home Office.

In the Prime Minister's words,
"Its the right thing to do."

Well the right thing for him. If its right for the country though...?