“Now he and his leader know what it’s like to be people’s second
choice,” trilled George Osborne during his recent encounter with Ed Balls over the dispatch
box. But might Balls actually have been Miliband’s third choice for the shadow chancellorship? That’s the implication of a delicious little story in today’s Sun, which claims that
Miliband first “tapped up” his brother, aka MiliD, when trying to replace Alan Johnson:
“A Labour insider revealed: ‘Ed’s people were desperate not to give the job to Balls.’
However, Ed stopped short of offering his brother the job when David made it clear he wanted to stay on the backbenches.”
If true, then it’s revealing on two counts. First, it suggests that Ed Miliband is going out of his way to cool the simmering resentment between his supporters and those of his brother.
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