J’accuse backfires

Andrea Leadsom seems to have backed down a little from last night’s suggestion that George Osborne ‘should apologise’ for saying that Ed Balls had ‘questions to answer’ about Libor. This morning, perhaps after a cheery morning phone call from someone at CCHQ, she took to the airwaves to clarify what she had said: 

‘Look, I was talking about a very specific point last night, which is the extent to which the Labour party may have leaned on the Bank of England, which Paul Tucker completely refuted. I want to be very clear here: this is an inquiry about the banks’ behaviour, and Ed Balls still has a huge amount to answer for about his time in office during the last parliament, when the tripartite regime absolutely failed us and allowed the banks to get into this mess. ‘So whilst I was talking about a specific point I think Ed Balls still has huge questions to answer about his time office.’