Balls’ bloodlust gets the better of him

Ed Balls’ problem is his killer instinct. If he were a Twilight vampire, he’d be a Tracker: someone whose uncontrollable bloodlust takes him to places he should avoid. His position on the deficit is so extreme — more debt, more spending — that he’s pretty much isolated now. People are mocking him. John Lipsky, the acting IMF chief came two weeks ago and rubbished Balls’ alternative (as Tony Blair did) — so Balls, ever the fighter, has today given a long speech where he sinks his fangs into Lipsky and says (in effect) “I’ll take on the lot of you!”

But Balls is brilliant. Often George Osborne seems not to bother arguing, and instead seeking approval from an alphabet soup of external agencies (“I must be right, the ABCD says so!”) Balls is in the old-fashioned business of making arguments. Good for him. But he can’t resist stretching the truth, sometimes until the elastic snaps.