Ed Miliband has just taken the biggest risk of his leadership in appointing Ed Balls as
his shadow Chancellor. Balls’ is not a man who take orders and his view on the deficit is noticeably different from Ed Miliband’s. He is also the person most closely associated with
Gordon Brown’s economic record.
George Osborne will relish this fight. During the vacuum between Ed Miliband winning the leadership and the shadow Cabinet elections, Osborne prepared for facing Balls. He told friends,
‘we’ve circled around each other long enough. It is time to get on with it now.’
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