Ed balls
Lack of clarity about Labour’s spending plans
This, via Full Fact, is the only graph you need to continue the debate about housing policy. If the conventional wisdom is that the Attlee and Macmillan governments built a lot of houses, it contradicts it. Not many were built under Attlee, and the peak was under Wilson in 1968. Which is what gave us [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Sunday, 9 June 2013 at 9:24 pm
“We will spend the money which we inherit, no more”
Ed Balls, one of the 10 most interesting politicians in Britain, was interviewed by Andrew Neil on the BBC’s Sunday Politics. Here is the transcript.
AN: Ed Balls joins me now for the Sunday interview. Ed Balls, welcome back. Both you and Mr Miliband, you made major speeches last week. What of importance do we now [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Sunday, 9 June 2013 at 3:58 pm
Footnote on Labour’s EU referendum
I was too emphatic in my interpretation of Ed Balls’s views on a referendum on EU membership in my column for The Independent on Sunday. I said that the Shadow Chancellor had urged Ed Miliband to promise an in-out referendum before the Prime Minister did so – which he eventually did in his speech on 23 [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Friday, 7 June 2013 at 11:09 am
In Defence of Ed Balls
The one thing more annoying than Ed Balls refusing to accept that the Labour government was irresponsible to borrow at the peak of the boom is the utter delight and feigned incomprehension of right-wingers at the Shadow Chancellor’s statement yesterday:
Do I think the last Labour government was profligate, spent too much, had too much national [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Tuesday, 4 June 2013 at 3:07 pm
What is Labour policy on the benefits cap?
The benefits cap, which limits household welfare benefits to £26,000 a year, the level of average earnings, was brought in on 15 April in four London boroughs. It will be extended to the rest of the country in July.
Ed Balls last week told LBC that Labour would “definitely keep” the cap, so long as it [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Saturday, 27 April 2013 at 5:12 pm
Kamikaze or clever?
My column for The Independent on Sunday today is a big fat “don’t know”. I thought my esteemed colleague Andrew Grice’s front-page lead in The Independent on Friday was one of those moments that will appear in those chronologies we instant historians like to put at the back of our books:
19 April 2013: Labour’s decision [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Sunday, 21 April 2013 at 3:25 pm
Worst first paragraph of a political press release this afternoon
This just in from Ed Balls: It was a serious mistake for George Osborne to totally ignore the IMF’s calls for a reassessment of fiscal policy in the Budget. They are right to step up their warnings and insist that a change of economic policy is considered right now.
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Tuesday, 16 April 2013 at 4:24 pm
A Measure of Labour’s Problem
David Miliband’s resignation as an MP to run a charity in New York is a loss to the Labour Party. More than that, though, it tells us what a state Labour is in.
There has recently been speculation about the possibility of Alistair Darling replacing Ed Balls as shadow chancellor – a change on which Darling [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Tuesday, 26 March 2013 at 9:40 pm
Ed Balls on the Budget
Ed Balls, the shadow chancellor, adopted quite a good tone of welcoming many of the things in the Budget in this BBC News discussion this afternoon.
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Wednesday, 20 March 2013 at 5:29 pm
10p tax rate: the politics of tiny differences
I read Ed Miliband’s speech this morning before I realised that there was a fuss over his plan to reintroduce a 10p income tax band, paid for by a mansion tax on homes worth more than £2m.
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Thursday, 14 February 2013 at 4:04 pm
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