Member News
By Sam Macrory - 9th February 2011
Finally, at 2:30pm yesterday afternoon, Ed Balls’ moment arrived. Well, nearly.
He never have managed to get his hands on the chancellorship, and he didn’t fair all that well in his party’s post-election leadership contest either, so shadow chancellor will have to do – for now.
It has been nine long months since the general election, which Balls had largely spent in a frustrating stint as shadow home secretary, at last George Osborne was in his sights.
To say that these two don’t like each other is an understatement, and both have no doubts whatsoever that the keys to 11 Downing Street should be theirs.
All day, the TV studios had welcomed Balls in to bullishly talking up his opponents’ failings like a muscle-flexing boxer at the weigh-in, and in the claustrophobic world of the Westminster Village this was the clash everyone was talking about.
Beyond its confines, however, it’s doubtful if anyone cared. And if they tuned in, they might have cared even less. Neither Balls nor Osborne are attractive Despatch Box performers. One is supremely self-confident, deeply tribal, and likes to shout a lot, the other is supremely self-confident, deeply tribal, and likes to shout a lot too, only with a shriller voice. And as the two lived up to type, rather than the hype, little was learned.
This was louder and more aggressive than previous Treasury questions, but then Balls is an altogether louder and more aggressive person than Alan Johnson, the man he succeeded as shadow chancellor. Economic theories and analysis was left largely unexplored, and instead the insults flew.
Balls had a nice opener, dismissing “this morning’s rather hurried mini budget” as he referenced Osborne’s dawn announcement to increase the levy on the banks by £800m. But that craftily-timed policy shift also seemed to wrong-foot Balls, who was left smirking uncomfortably as the chancellor managed to knock two Eds together by reminding Balls that “he and the leader of the opposition both know what it’s like to be people’s second choices.”
Ed Miliband wasn’t around to answer back, but for a litmus test of Balls’ support, it was notable that Labour MPs hardly leapt to his defence.
And then, the line that we will hear over and over again: Balls, as the man who worked so closely with Gordon Brown, was dismissed by Osborne as “the man with the past…he simply refuses to deal with it.” The Tories will do their best to make that line stick; and the shadow chancellor doesn’t have all that long to make sure it doesn’t.
So it continued. We returned once again to the land of past failures as Osborne dismissed Balls as a “deficit-denier”, while Balls in turn attempted to conjure up images of out-of-touch Tories as he told the chancellor that he “should have spent less time on the ski slopes of Switzerland.” That one stung, just a little: Osborne stared back unblinkingly. Balls continued until he ran out of steam, and as Osborne imperiously swatted away the Labour frontbench, their shadow chancellor spent the remainder of the questions shaking his head dismissively. You have to admire the stamina. The head just never stops shaking. No wonder he has one of the most brass-based necks in politics.
On the Labour side, the bruisers waded in. Helen Goodman and Sharon Hodgson heckled and hollered as Justine Greening, a Treasury minister, did her best to justify the closures of a string of Citizen Advice Bureaus, while the broad-shouldered John Cryer looked as if he wanted to hit Danny Alexander, after the altogether less physically-imposing chief secretary to the Treasury told Cryer to "accept, not deny...the enormous budget deficit."
From the Conservative benches, the brown-nosing ranks took turns to stroke the chancellor’s already impressively proportioned ego, with Jane Ellison, Mark Menzies, David Tredennick, and Rehman Chisti amongst a string of Tory MPs to leave pre-polished apples on the Despatch Box.
Fiona Bruce nearly broke the backbench Tory mould, with her request for “support and resources” for her constituents affected by the closure of a bathroom manufacturer. Her question met with a promise of “sympathy” from minister David Gauke. “You can’t feed kids with sympathy,” someone shouted, and Ed Balls briefly switched the head-shake to a frantic nod.
Eventually it took the snapped patience of a number of Tory backbenchers to put the ministers on the spot, as first Douglas Carswell, with a question on the Irish bailout, and then an irritated David Davis, who asked about tax arrangements for major public companies, briefly caused a stir.
It wasn’t much, but Davis and Carswell caused the government more difficulty than Balls and his team had managed. So was this worth the wait? Of course not. Balls seemed to have too much to get off his chest to make much of a decisive point, and when he did, Osborne merely reminded MPs who Balls had once worked for and when. Yes, this was good Parliamentary theatre, but before long it could begin to feel like an endless repeat.
Have your say...
Please enter your comments below.