Jim Murphy for Shadow Chancellor?

Good stuff from Iain Martin:

[Ed Miliband will] have to deal with Ed Balls and Yvette Cooper. Balls is an impressively robust “big beast” who wants to be shadow Chancellor, but Ed Miliband may not fancy sub-contracting his economic policy to someone so tricky to control. Subverting Lyndon Johnson’s famous rule, keeping Ed Balls inside the tent makes no difference – he’ll probably still urinate on his colleagues.

Indeed. The Balls Problem is a tricky one. Ed Balls is a fine attack dog perhaps the best, certainly the most ferocious, Labour have. But if Miliband gives Balls the Treasury brief there’s every chance that the Shadow Chancellor will eclipse the Leader of the Opposition. That would leave Miliband looking weak and fushionless, powerless to prevent Balls from pissing everywhere freelancing and all the rest of it.

On the other hand, the Treasury brief is even more important in this parliament than is customarily the case.