At last! There’s a bit of British spunk about the Labour leadership contest. Andy Burnham has accused his rivals of smearing him. The finger of suspicion points at Ed Balls - given past form and his natural proclivities. Burnham and Balls are fighting for a similar constituency – both are running broadly ‘traditional’ tickets. Both are struggling. Balls has 5 Constituency L...

Andy Burnham’s leadership campaign is going the way of all flesh. According to Left Foot Forward’s model, Burnham is set to come fourth behind Ed Balls. A You Gov poll predicts a similarly poor showing for Burnham. I’m surprised by this. Against a field of gawky rivals, Burnham is presentable. Also, after a faltering start, he has tuned a clear anti-establishment message, crafted...

Andy Burnham just gave his conference speech - and it went down very well on the floor. Mr Balls stretches out his beer gut in preparation for the match Being in charge of the so-called Department for Fun and Games has had its perks for a culture secretary's profile: Olympic golds and free theatre tickets tend to go down better than escaped prisoners and economic woe. Burn...

Remember how earlier in the year we were amused to watch Schools Secretary Ed Balls and Culture Secretary Andy Burnham playing on a swing?Well since it is technically silly season now, I feel it's time for another bout of watching Ed Balls pretending he's back at school again.I am alerted to this video of him on Youtube which features him skipping, promoting the work of Skip2bfit, ...

You know how it is.  You start reading an article by Ed Balls - in this case, in today's Guardian - and, before long, you've come across so many deceptions, half-truths and tribal slurs that you decide to fisk the whole thing.  So here is Balls's article, with my supplementary comments in bold: The first group of young people to have been entirely educated under Labour pic...

To prolong the success of #welovethenhs, Andy Burnham wrote David Cameron a letter yesterday which was so absurd it read like a Private Eye spoof. And today, Burnham is still trying to keep the pressure on the Tories and missing his target. He writes in the Guardian that Tories intend to turn ‘Britain’s best loved institution into the world’s biggest quango’ – a sound...

Another Sunday, another Labour leadership contender on Marr. But Andy Burnham’s performance this morning did him few favours. His argument for his candidacy seems to be that because he’s northern and from a working class background he’d be a better leader than either of the Milibands or Ed Balls. The limitations around Burnham’s candidacy were exposed when the question of i...

The Daily Mail reported yesterday that Downing Street suspected that Ed Miliband and Douglas Alexander knew in advance of David Miliband's Guardian op-ed. Today, in The Times Alice Miles, who is close to Ed Miliband, insists that Ed was unaware of it: Ed did not know about the article David wrote for The Guardian this week, which is being read as the launch of a leadership bid by the older Miliban...

Labour Party Leadership supporting nominations closed at 1pm today: CLPs David Miliband – 165 Ed Miliband – 148 Andy Burnham – 44 Diane Abbott – 20 Ed Balls – 17 Trade Unions (in approx size order) Unite – Ed Miliband Unison - Ed Miliband GMB - Ed Miliband USDAW - David Miliband CWU - Ed Balls Community - David Miliband UCATT - Ed Miliband TSSA - Diane Abbott ASLEF - Diane Abbott NUM â...

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...