Ed Balls is right: it’s time to think again about pensioners

You can accuse Ed Balls of a great many things (and we do), but he doesn’t do gaffes. His interviews are always worth paying close attention to, because every soundbite is carefully-considered, weighed for its political potency and constantly reused. Anyone who missed his interview with Andrew Neil yesterday should catch it (here) because – like Ben Brogan – I suspect it marks a new direction in UK economic debate: that pensioners’ benefits should be subject to cuts, like everything else.

The curious way that George Osborne conducts his economic policy – as a constant game of chess against a political opponent – confers great power on Ed Balls. What the Shadow Chancellor says about economics matters more than what anyone else in the Cabinet says about economics. Osborne’s fateful decision to ringfence all pensioner benefits, from bus passes to TV licenses, was made in a panicked moment during election time to try to close down one of Balls’s attack lines.