Dear God, am I going to start liking Ed Balls?

What the hell is going on with Ed Balls? Back in the horrible doldrums of the last Labour government, he was the most reliable total bastard around. There was Gordon Brown himself, of course, throwing phones at people and using his special sinister voice when he spoke about children, and Damian McBride, who had a reputation for being the nastiest spin-doctor there ever was, although he only ever texted me twice and actually quite nicely. Balls, though, was the spirit animal who tied the whole thing together.

So many years later, it is almost impossible to convey how weary and stale that government was by the end. How it seemed to only have two modes, which were moments of belligerent chaos and the lulls between them, during which it sat there, covered in the crumbs of its own garage snacks, breathing too fast. If David Cameron seemed fresh, likeable and normal back then, and he did, then Balls was at least part of the reason why.