How can we possibly present a coherent message when our cabinet presents such a contradictory message? If anyone wonders why Labour is in such dire straits then look at the disconnect Ed balls displays between public statements and true belief. At conference Ed Balls has popped up with a newfound conversion to the values of regulating the financial markets. ED BALLS SEPT 21 2008 said :   ...

During the leadership campaign Ed Balls has demonstrated his willingness to march to the beat of a different drum against the mainstream consensus over the need for spending cuts. However, neither the party membership nor the public seem to have warmed to him. But Ed Balls can do human. Here he is drumming with his pen pall

Ed Balls MP is a widely reviled figure in the right-wing press and right-wing blogs. But it's more unfortunate that many on the left have also bought into the narrative that 'Ed Balls is a bully' or that he is unelectable simply because the right-wing press don't like him. But Ken Livingstone last night on Newsnight made a point about Ed Balls that I've heard repeated seve...

Ed Miliband has just taken the biggest risk of his leadership in appointing Ed Balls as his shadow Chancellor. Balls’ is not a man who take orders and his view on the deficit is noticeably different from Ed Miliband’s. He is also the person most closely associated with Gordon Brown’s economic record. George Osborne will relish this fight. During the vacuum between Ed Miliband win...

So fraternal rivalry it is, then, as Ed Miliband prepares to announce his leadership bid at a Fabian Society conference today. And, reading his interview with the Guardian, it's clear that Ed Balls is soon going to follow suit. Two Eds, two leadership bids, and much shared rhetoric about "listening" to voters. But the similarities don't end there. The passage where Ed Balls arg...

This brightened the day. Alastair Campbell, courtesy of his complete diaries, on Ed Balls: “Ed Balls spoke drivel, a never-ending collection of words that just ran into each other and became devoid of meaning.”

There is a mistake that left-wingers frequently make: that is, to buy the narrative that right-wingers are spinning for them. I fear this is the trap that Hopi Sen has fallen in when he makes the case against Ed Balls' candidacy for Labour leadership: As a result of this hurly-burly past, what Ed Balls doesn’t have is a positive public image. So what?

I know this is a Hazel Blears blog, but I am disgusted at the way the media - with the notable exception of the Daily Mail - has buried this story: Yes, that is Minister of the Crown Ed Balls dressed as a Nazi, next to a guy in a plastic bum. I'm all for doing silly things when you're younger, and I'm sure this in no way represents Ed Balls's politics - though obviously he'...

Ed Balls, as shadow education secretary, making the main conference speech, has been voluble and effective on this subject since the election but his approach on Wednesday was a touch perfunctory.

I have just forced myself to sit through the Sharon Shoesmith interview on R4 done by my least favourite seventies femminist interviewer Jennie Murray. I was prepared to give her the benefit of the doubt, as I do not trust Ed Balls as far as I can throw him. But listening to the self serving,self justifying claptrap I have just heard, and Murray's very direct questioning, Ed Balls was right, ...