Ed Balls’ softer language about Nick Clegg might be an inevitable repositioning of the Labour party in the run-up to another hung parliament in 2015, or it might be the shadow chancellor trying to get ahead of the game after the end to his 2013 was rather bruising. But it is worth mulling the sorts of things that, aside from personalities, the two parties could struggle with.
One is the language that those at the top have used about Labour wrecking the recovery. At the 2013 Lib Dem autumn conference, Nick Clegg said:
‘Labour would wreck the recovery. The Conservatives would give us the wrong kind of recovery.’
Some Labour figures such as Lord Adonis felt this was unfair on Labour: wrecking the recovery is far worse than swerving off balance, surely? But this sort of language is easily forgiven when government looms: just remember the awkward jokes in the Rose Garden in 2010 about comments David Cameron had made about Nick Clegg.
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