Ed Balls says the same stuff, differently

The road to Damascus has nothing on this. Ed Balls – in interview with the FT – has condemned the class war strategy, called for an end to Labour figures briefing against each other, and suggested that the government should be more “upfront” about spending cuts. Hallelujah! What a difference an attempted coup makes! And so on and so on.

But wait a minute. What does the Schools Secretary actually say? Worth looking at, that – because Balls hasn’t so much changed his arguments as changed the way he makes them. Take, for instance, what he says about class war:

“‘I’m totally against a class war strategy,’ he says. But he describes Mr Brown’s Commons remark that Mr Cameron made policy ‘on the playing fields of Eton’ as a ‘really good joke’. Alastair Campbell is widely thought to have been the author of the quip.