Ed Balls’s speech to Labour conference just now was a typically Ballsian performance. There was intellectual aggression, dividing lines with the Tories and a bit of class warfare from this privately educated Oxbridge graduate.
The meat of Balls’ address was a Brown-style five point plan. The new elements of this were a National Insurance holiday for new workers and a reduction in Vat to five percent for home improvements and maintenance. The former struck me as a classic bit of opposition politics, work out what the government might try and do and announce it first.
Then there were the wildly trailed announcements about how any profits from the bank shares would be used to pay down the national debt, a line that Fraser has thoroughly filleted, and the announcement of a new set of fiscal rules. These new fiscal rules have been in the pipeline for months but the question is will anyone trust a man accused of massaging Treasury forecasts to stick within the rules.
The Tories are already on the attack. They claim that their calculations show that the speech includes £20bn of unfunded spending commitments: same old Balls, always borrowing.
Balls’ message on the past was confused. He told conference, to passionate applause, ‘don’t let anyone tell you that Labour in government was profligate with public money’. But he also conceded that ‘We didn’t spend every pound of public money well.’
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