The Spectator on the threat Ed Balls poses to the government
For Conservatives, a leadership fight is a blood sport: a feast of passion, revenge and political violence. Labour’s current contest has thus far been the precise opposite: an excruciatingly dull five-way verbal joust between candidates who have nothing new or original to say. Two of the candidates regularly express their fraternal love for one another. Still, however tedious, the contest remains one of historic importance because the winner may well be the next Prime Minister. After all, it would be a surprise if the leader of an opposition party with 256 seats — enough to force the Tories into coalition — did not win the next election. It is also important because it has identified Ed Balls as the single greatest threat to the government.
Balls’s hopes of winning the leadership ended when the Unite trade union, which was supposed to be his greatest ally, endorsed Ed Miliband instead. His claim that he is ‘still in it to win it’ is put in perspective by the bookmakers’ odds on his so doing: now 23-1. In the end, his allies — the same axis of thugs who helped Gordon Brown plot his way to power — proved useless in a contest. Pitbulls have their uses, but they don’t win at Crufts.
But that same viciousness that prevents Ed Balls from becoming prime minister marks him out as the most dangerous enemy of the coalition government. Even Balls’s most trenchant critics do not doubt his talent. He helped Gordon Brown set the terms of economic debate in this country for the last 15 years. In recent weeks, he has successfully orchestrated the attacks on Michael Gove’s schools agenda. He possesses an unusual grasp of detail, numeracy (an increasingly rare skill in politics) and a killer political instinct.
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