Gordon Brown’s closest ally told Labour critics yesterday to stop their
“indulgent nonsense” and ignore the “disappointeds” who talked the language
of defeat.
In an outspoken interview with The Times, Ed Balls said that Labour must not
fall for false prophets, and gave warning that Labour would be “intolerant”
of anyone who put personal interests and disappointments before the party’s
and the country’s.
There would always be people who “have a gripe, a score to settle and
disappointments from the past – it was ever thus”, said Mr Balls, the
Schools Secretary.
Labour was trying to win back power in local elections in places such as
Merseyside, Birmingham and Leeds. “The efforts of local councillors and
shadow leaders should not be undermined by this kind of indulgent nonsense.
Rather than cause difficulties for the party, Labour will feel that these
people should get out on the campaign trail and start fighting the
Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats.” Of his leader, Mr Balls said:
“Anybody who has the strength and conviction to take the tough decisions he
did on public spending in his first two years, resist pressure to go into
the euro and deal with fears of recession in 1998 and 2001 shows that he
knows how to handle difficult times.
“When times are tough is when experience counts. When times are tough is when
unity of the party is at a premium. When times are tough, having ideas and
policies for the future really matters.”
The comments were particularly aimed at the Labour figures who, Mr Balls
believes, have privately briefed against Mr Brown, even suggesting that he
might go and that Charles Clarke may run as a stalking horse. He denounced
the “silly gossip” that Labour figures have fed to newspapers during the
Easter recess.
Mr Balls also defended himself at a time when he has become embroiled in
controversy over naming and shaming schools that are said to have broken the
new admissions code. Mr Balls has been accused of conducting a witch-hunt
against faith schools, of a “near-criminal” attack on high-performing
schools, and of positioning himself for a future leadership challenge.
He strongly denied the charges laid against him, and mounted a vigorous
defence of the Prime Minister who, he said, had gone through tough times
before.
Asked whether he now regretted that Mr Brown had not gone for an early
election, Mr Balls said that he saw no point in looking backwards or
regretting decisions like that: “What we have to do is fight a good election
campaign and work across Government to show we are focused on delivering our
mission of change.”
He brushed aside suggestions that the malcontents were taking revenge on Mr
Brown for his own allies causing trouble for Tony Blair. Instead Mr Balls
emphasised the ideological unity of his party. He said that governments
under midterm pressure go on to lose elections because they have mismanaged
the economy, are ideologically divided and lose touch with the concerns of
voters. Mr Balls said although he was not complacent, the Government should
not fail on any of those counts. The doom merchants “need a reality check”.
Mr Balls laughed off suggestions that he was a “class warrior”. He said he had
spent ten years at the Treasury, where he was part of the drive to open up
the markets and promote enterprise and entrepreneurship. He was City
Minister, where he travelled the world promoting London’s role as a dynamic
enterprising centre. “I do not think anybody who met me in New York or
Frankfurt or Tokyo would have thought that this was a class warrior they
were meeting.”
He also compared the Big Bang reforms in the City in the 1980s to what he was
trying to achieve in education, including the controversial changes to the
admissions code. The City was great as a financial centre because in the
1980s it accepted that if it was to become world-class, restrictive
practices had to be removed and the system had to be opened up to talent,
entrepreneurship and new opportunities, Mr Balls said. There was a parallel
in education.
“I will refute any charge that I am for anything other than excellence. I and
every parent want their children to go to an excellent school and have the
best chances. But there is a choice as a society. Are we simply about
preserving excellence for those who have it or are we determined to make
sure that excellence and opportunity is open to all?
“What we are doing in having education to 18, curriculum reform, the
admissions code, is putting in place big reforms to open up opportunity for
all. The City of London would never have flourished in the 1990s unless we
had had the reforms of the 1980s. I do not think as an economy and education
system we will be excellent unless we use the talents of everyone. The
dividing line between the parties is the difference between preserving
excellence for some or opening up excellence for all. I am determined to
fight the battle for excellence for all.”
Mr Balls said that he did not regret the way he handled the school admissions
review, which suggested that one in six state schools might be breaching the
new admissions code, with some asking parents for “voluntary contributions”
worth hundreds of pounds on their application forms. The majority of
offenders were said to be faith schools.
Ministers had thought very hard about how the review should be handled in
February and March and he had not asked for the work to be done with the
intention of publishing it. But when the information came it showed they
were not making the kind of progress they would have liked on the code in
the last year, he said. It was serious information about what was happening
for parents.
“The judgment we took after legal advice from a QC was that to sit on this
information would have been totally irresponsible. We judged we could not
make it public until we had verified it. But to have gone through the
verification process without having made public what we were going to do
would have been wrong. We took a QC’s advice on what our legal obligations
were. We looked very carefully at this because we were worried about what we
had found.
“We did not want to disrupt the admissions process but we wanted to know what
the position was. We judged it was right to let the admissions process
proceed and make the information public for parents. It would be wrong to
conceal it and we wanted to make sure the coming admissions process was
better.
“Of course it has been misrepresented politically by some. I had detailed
discussions for months on this with all of the faith leaders and local
government and teachers. What we have done is ensured there had been much
great focus now on getting the admissions arrangements right.
Local authorities and diocesan officials are now very well aware of their
responsibilities.
“People will look back and say we have made a decisive step towards fair
admissions. We decided the responsible thing was to act. We had clear
evidence that for many thousands of parents the arrangements had not been as
fair as the code required.”
Frank Field, the Labour MP, had called his moves “near-criminal” and others
suggested that Mr Balls was positioning himself for a leadership battle. The
latter charge was “absurd”, he said. “I have a responsibility to parents and
children. My responsibility is to ensure the admissions code is implemented
and that admissions are fair and according to the law. The question I asked
myself was whether I had done enough to fulfil my responsibilities to
parents and whether the law had been followed.
“I fully respect the views of everyone, including those who disagree with me.
If Frank looks at what we are doing and talks to diocesan leaders, he will
see it is the right thing by faith schools.”
Mr Balls said he was not denying that for some schools it was stressful and
uncomfortable and in many cases they would feel that they should have had
more advice from the local authorities on what the code required.
It would have been wrong to suppress that information, he said. If a parent
had found out afterwards that the Secretary of State had known the
information but not made it public he would not have felt the minister was
on his side.
balls cant complain ! his colleagues are now finding out on the doosteps of uk public "we dont want you anymore" your time is up. we are all disgusted with the bully boys of labour, encroaching on our civil liberties, lying to our children over student fees lying to the nation on so many things including a referendum
paul, potters bar, uk
Interesting that Mr Balls puts party before country in his list of priorities. His teminology is reminiscent of the worst type of rhetoric and would not be surprising coming out of the mouth of Mugabe and predecessors of his ilk.
I think Balls IS positioning himself as a future leader. If successful, I think he will have a Scargill effect. That is to take a previously strong and principled organisation into total oblivion, in his case having extracted a huge amount of expenses from the public purse on the way.
Let's just be grateful that we didn't have that election last year. A Brown Balls government with a 5 year 'mandate from the people' is too nightmarish to contemplate.
Jonathan Spencer, London, UK
"Resist pressure to go into the euro". Not only has brown lopped 20 percent off the value of all our savings because he stupidly failed to get Britain into the euro as early as possible, but now the aptly named Balls is proud of it. Brown's failure to join the euro is one of the greatest of his long list of mistakes.
Chris , Bedford,
The more I see and hear of Ed Balls the more fI develop a nasty taste in my mouth. He is the man who replied "so what" when he was challenged over the average man now facing his highest ever tax burden.
roger , york,
In the name of God Gordon go and go now.
Mikko Takala, Drumnadrochit, Scotland
if Brown was Stalin, Balls would be his Yezhov!
chris , hong kong, china
The trouble with all the pro Brown supporters, they have already feathered their nests, at Tax payers expence, the only ones left out in the cold is the vonorable, ill advised, with the negative equity, and the threats of their homes being re possessed. They are now worried about losing their seats, Brown is worried about losing at the next Election, what ever their intentions to do they have done and bankrupted Britain and left Tax payers with the debt, they can go off and writ their books to tell the world how they plundered the British economy, and started their illegal wars, and leave office with service men and women out in the deserts of the Arab world wondering what they are fighting for.
daphne kenward, Cambridge, UK
Labour will be "intolerant" of different views, says Mr Ball ?
Well, who'd have thought it.
L Stewart, Spalding, England
Let's face it, Mugabe is a monster, Brown is, God knows, and Balls is no more than a despicable little champagno. As I've suggested often, a change: an annual, or bi-annual, referendum of satisfaction with the sitting government, failure in which would trigger an immediate general election. But who are we to say, tho9se who simply pick up the bill?
John Lee, Ellesmere Port SSR, UK
May God save us from a ghastly, despicable horror like Balls.
John Lee, Ellesmere Port SSR, UK
May God save us all from a ghastly, despicabe horror like Balls.
John Lee, Ellesmere Port SSR, UK
"When times are tough, having ideas and policies for the future really matters" - and that is why this government is finished Mr Balls! Labour dont have (any good) ideas or (decent) policies. The pathetic spin based government (paedophiles e-mail addresses banned from social networking sites, Balls' artificial school panic) is finished. They did a couple of decent things early on, but fundamentally they are just not very good at running things. In the last few years they have just returned to tax and spend.
Labour have spent billions on reducing child poverty, without having tackled the root causes. They have spent billions on bureaucracy and institutionalised stupidity. I look forward to seeing all these rubbishy jobs being axed under the next tory government.
Ken , Oxford,
Rather than ´fighting the tories´ shouldn´t the government be fighting for the country?
Alex, Buenos Aires,
With such a comparatively short time to go to the next general election and there being no obvious candidate of stature to replace Brown and establish him (or her)self before then, this tree-shaking speculation presumably by Blairistas does seem incredible at this time. Brown will most likely lose because of his management of the economy but how could any other candidate avoid being similarly tarred? By repudiating the 10 years of boom during Blair's reign? Unless they are counting on defeat and already positioning themselves for the post-defeat carve-up. May 2005 was understood by the public as the "vote Blair, get Brown" election so Brown's accession was simply a matter of when Blair would leave the stage.
Bob T, London, UK
Reading these comments, people seem to have Ed Balls' number. Anyone who had read one of the recent Blair biographies or the Campbell Diaries will already be aware of EB's vileness towards Blair in the service of Gordon Brown. It is hard to think of a person less well suited to making a call for loyalty and party discipline.
Balls knows that Brown's Premiership is foundering, and also knows that his own fortunes depend on Brown hanging on to office - no other Labour leader would give him house room. The fact that such an individual is so prominent in the current Government is a true indicator of the paucity of available Ministerial talent these days.
Sadly Labour is now realising its mistake in appointing as leader someone so temperamentally unsuited for the PMship, and in contriving his election so that his candidacy remained entirely unopposed and untested.
Also, what better time to contrast the likes of Ed Balls with real politicians like the late Gwynyth Dunwoody?
Roy Pinney, Weston Super Mare,
This is the man that claims £27,000 a year from the taxpayer to subsidise his London home through the ruse of declaring his holiday home in Yorkshire his primary house. Tops up his family income of £240,000 very nicely, no wonder he is impatient with people whinging about losing a few quid through the abolition of the lower tax band.
Ian, Cheltenham,
The good thing is that this spiteful smirking little man, so typical of Brown's New Labour, will alienate the last support for that corrupt party.
john, lincoln,
This party has reached its sell by date, and we need elections. Gordon Brown is an unelected and unwanted politican and is therefore holding a political coup. I find it amazing that he criticises Mugabe, when they are both unelected leaders who their people want to get rid of!
Matt, Napoli, Italy
After the way he treated Blair, he doesn't deserve one ounce of respect or loyalty (neither does Brown).
Ed Balls as a future Labour leader? Don't make me laugh!
James, Salford, UK
Start packing your bags Balls, there is little left for the Government to sell or ruin now, your job is done.
Roger, Surrey,
So what?
judy, Liverpool, England
"Labour would be “intolerant†of anyone who put personal interests and disappointments before the party’s and the country’s".
Several people have already commented. I wish the Nulab would expel those who "who put personal interests and disappointments before the party’s" Surely "So What" E Balls and Mrs Balls are the ideal candidates for this expulsion.
paul turfery, Cork, Ireland, Paul, Andover, Michael Powell, Colchester, UK, Brian Gilbert, HAMPTON, Middx, Tim holden, budleigh salterton, john, Oxford, England, Kevin Rogers, Preston, United Kingdom, barbara, north east and wills, soton, uk are to be complimented on heir perspicacity in identifying this “gentleman†as a significant cause of Nulab’s problems along with Bean Brown himself!
M. Cawdery, Portadown, Co. UK, EU.
Gordon Brown is pathetic but Tony Blair did nothing good or Britain either! The electorate made a mistake by electing labour to power in 1997 as the real man behind the resurgence was John Smith! When he died, people should have turned their backs!
Matt, Napoli, Italy
British politics need an earthquake! We now have three parties who are unelectable. We have no charismatic figures and have seen over the years a political class that is interested in personal and not national interests!
Teresa, Napoli, Italy
Brown is unelected and should call elections immediately so that we can elect a PM democratically!
Nick, Maidstone, England
What a lot of Balls! No dissent allowed, forget your principles and beliefs, toe the party line or else! We call our country a democracy? Thank God for the likes of Frank Field who is looked on as a "maverick" by the leadership and a constant thorn in their side! He is just about the only remaining (man of principle) Labour politician capable of turning the tide of defeat that is assuredly going to engulf Labour! All others are cowed by high level threats, not a satisfactory way to run a Government is it?
R.B., Leicester,
So what Mr Balls. This sneering champagne socialist and his crony wife represent all that is worst about Labour and their attitute to the spoils of power. The hypocrisy of his statements regarding equal opportunities in schooling stands out in relation to his own gilded rise to prominance alongside his unelected boss. How much does the tax payers have to pay for Balls and Cooper?
Simon J Jackson, London,
The irony of Ed Balls complaining of people privately briefing the media! A master class in why this NuLab apparatchik should be allowed nowhere near power.
Mike, Brighton, UK
Didn't G.Brown spend 10 years sulking about his personal interest in becoming PM not being realised and doing all he could to knife Tony Blair using the good offices of the aforementioned Ed Balls. Frankly there is hardly a less credible character to call for unity and loyalty to the Leader than this man.
Peter Buss, Canterbury,
Balls calls the Labout dissent an "indulgence". Hardly. They are realising they made a terrible mistake with Brown - last summer there was no debate about policy, not even a proper election. Frankly, Labour let the country down massively on this score alone. Partly what we are seeing now is the debate they should have had, and a very natural fear of losing 100 seats or more. Brown cannot possibly cling to office until 2010 as an essentially unelected PM and he knows it. And Balls will go down with him (as he also well knows).
Steve Burns, Tunbridge Wells, Kent
What an arrogant, unpleasant and calculating man who seems to see every issue in terms of its impact on the Labour Party and his own career prospects. I cannot wait to see a breakdown of his own and Yvette Cooper's expenses claims!
paul turfery, Cork, Ireland
Miliband predicted it on BBC Question Time a year ago - "Within 6 months you will be wishing you had Tony Blair back"
Tony Blair warned us of the "Clunking Fist".
Mandelson could see 15 years ago, who would be the best captain, and who should stay on the subs bench.
,,, and now the country can see too.
He was a Chancellor that presided over a sub prime economy and having finally got off the subs bench he is a Sub Prime Minister.
If it wasn't for the fact that Gordon Brown has the red card in his pocket the referees would be showing it to him now.
I can't wait for the final whistle.
Eddie, Cheshunt, Herts
Ed Balls gives his opinion.
pfffft - so what!
Paul, Andover,
'Labour was trying to win back power in local elections in places such as Merseyside, Birmingham and Leeds. “The efforts of local councillors and shadow leaders should not be undermined by this kind of indulgent nonsense,"' says Ed Balls.
- er I think their efforts are more likely to be undermined by Mr Balls and Mr Brown's abolition of the 10p income tax band, which will hammer millions of Labour voters on low incomes.
Labour activists on the ground know this - but those at the top of the party are completely out of touch with what's going on in Voterland these days.
Michael Powell, Colchester, UK
"......“intolerant†of anyone who put personal interests and disappointments before the party’s and the country’s. "
So how many people have been expelled from the party for this offence?
Brian Gilbert, HAMPTON, Middx
A bullying warning of intolerance to criticism, and a sneering discount of the severity of the problem from a man with bug-eyed ambitions. Everything they do, and everything they say betrays growing weakness. So what? So, shall he find out - when it comes down to the little matter of re-election.
tim holden, budleigh salterton,
Labour are looking tired and jaded, there is no innovation in the education system as with all Labour policies the minority win at the expense of the taxpaying majority. I demand my hard earned tax pounds are spend on those who deserve it not those who are poor. Labour have wasted so much money with little to show for it
steve tea, manchester, cheshire
Just confirms to me that Balls is part of the problem rather than part of the solution to it.
john, Oxford, England
Putting interests before party and country? That's a good one Mr Balls - Labour doesn't have the country's interests at heart at all otherwise you wouldn't be abolishing the 10p tax rate. This is the first Labour government I ever witnessed in history benefiting the rich by taking money off the poor!
Kevin Rogers, Preston, United Kingdom
So, Mr Balls, as a woman pensioner aged between 60 -65 who has just lost out an extra 2.5% of my income due to the abolition of the 10% tax band I am a griper am I. Fortunately my MP is not labour or he would certainly be getting his P45.
barbara, north east,
"Interests before the party" oh , and um ,oh yes the country !
wills, soton, uk
Too late Mr Balls. Labour is going down. Too little achieved given all the taxes people have paid. This is a wasteful Government and all its members a waste of space.
kris, dartford,