Ed balls

Following the vote just now, there will be a parliamentary inquiry into the Libor scandal. Andrew Tyrie, chairman of the Treasury select committee, will chair it because Ed Balls has agreed that Labour will participate in it as long as it concerns about membership and the secretariat are addressed; presumably, this means that Labour will argue that as it is a joint committee of both House there should be no government majority on it. The debate, though, has left an atmosphere of acrimony behind. It was noticeable that during the vote, Ed Balls walked past George Osborne who appeared to be trying to engage him in conversation.

The Osborne/Balls clash today was one of the most brutal I have seen in parliament. Osborne, leaning across the despatch box, mockingly enquired, ‘who was the City Minister when the Libor scandal happened? Put your hand up if you were the City Minister?’ Balls looked increasingly cross as Osborne continued down this path, demanding that the shadow Chancellor take ‘personal responsibility’ for the failures of the regulatory regime. Labour argues that the public are turned off by this kind of stuff; that they want to see answers rather than point-scoring. Even Darling — hardly an admirer of a man who coveted his job for so long — offered a partial defence of Balls, telling Osborne that the public don’t want partisanship on this issue.

Ed Miliband stands accused of many faults, but he rarely slips an opportunity to be opportunistic. James has said that the error and arrogance of the banking establishment, epitomised by the LIBOR and mis-selling scandals, allows Miliband to pose as a ‘tribune of the people’. And so it has come to pass. Miliband has today addressed the Fabian Society – a generous audience for him to be sure, but a suitably humble platform for him nonetheless.  He received a sort of reverse show trial: a lot of predictable questions to which he gave answers of breath-taking predictability. But that is their strength. Tony Parsons has a piece in today’s Mirror in which he argues that Miliband is beginning to sound prime ministerial.

What do Ed Balls and Mitt Romney have in common? They both want you to think that Barack Obama is spending government money like never before. For Mitt Romney, it’s an attack: he wants to make Obama a Big Government bogeyman who’s failing to tackle America’s deficit. ‘I will lead us out of this debt and spending inferno,’ the Republican nominee promises. For Ed Balls, it’s an example for Britain to follow: ‘I will lead us into this debt and spending inferno’, the shadow chancellor promises. Well, essentially. But the Obama camp is pushing back hard against such claims, highlighting a Wall Street Journal article yesterday titled ‘Obama spending binge never happened’.

Austerity, austerity, austerity. The A-word is cropping up everywhere at the moment, whether in France or Greece or Germany. And the UK isn't immune from it either. If there is anything on which Britain’s political factions agree, it is the reality of fiscal austerity. Whether it's Ed Balls banging on about ‘too far and too fast’, or the coalition saying that their programme of painful austerity is essential if the UK is to defend its triple-A ‘safe haven’ status, this is something on which our political class has reached consensus.   But, as we at Tullett Prebon argued in a briefing paper yesterday (available here as a pdf), the tale of ‘big’ cuts in public spending is a bare-faced deception.

It's only ten days or so since Ed Balls was last quizzed by Andrew Neil, but there he was rehashing many of the same lines on the Sunday Politics today. Among the things that stood out was this: the shadow chancellor’s argument on the public finances is ever more cleaving into two halves. First, he accuses George Osborne of borrowing £150 billion more over this Parliament than originally planned. (Although there’s a detail that often, conveniently, gets obscured: namely, that borrowing is still going down year-on-year under Osborne's plan). Second, that Balls's plan would decrease borrowing in the medium-term even though it would increase spending and reduce tax revenues in the short-term.

The leadership duo of Ed and Ed made an appearance this morning to rev up support for Labour ahead of this week’s elections. Today was all about appealing to those who have felt hard done by the government and want something different, whatever it may be. Miliband concentrated on setting out five ‘priorities’ for next week's Queen's Speech — the sorts of policies that, he claims, Labour would be enacting in government, and which we've heard from him before. Balls meanwhile was in full attack mode, deploying the usual buzz words and phrases, such as ‘alternative’, ‘fair’ and ‘Robin Hood tax’ to back up Miliband.

So who killed the recovery? Ed Balls points to a ‘recession made in Downing St,’ and has gone on a victory tour today. ‘I have consistently warned David Cameron and George Osborne for over a year that going too far and too fast on spending cuts would backfire,’ he says. ‘Arrogantly and complacently they ignored those warnings, and the country is paying a heavy price.’ Facts are always the remedy to an outbreak of Balls. The government releases monthly spending figures, which show an increase overall. That’s due to the rising cost of debt and dole, you might say, but strip those two out and you have what the ONS calls ‘core government spending’.