Uk politics

One thing that made Ed Balls' speech to conference look a little less impressive was the barnstormer of an address from Len McCluskey to the hall shortly before. Delegates loved it, and not just because the Unite leader was saying the sorts of things that they wanted to hear. He was also passionate and interesting. He deservedly received the first proper standing ovation of the week. So what did McCluskey think of the speech that followed from Ed Balls? I caught up with the union boss afterwards, and he managed some faint praise: 'Well, I think it was a long speech, and it was a very embracing speech, and I thought in parts it was a good speech.

One of the curious traditions of Labour conference is that directly after the Shadow Chancellor's speech, hard copies of his wise words are sold outside the conference hall. Any fiscally responsible Labour types trying to make difficult decisions about how to spend their money might be best advised to keep their £1 in their pockets for the time being, though. Today was not Ed Balls' finest hour. It can't just be that many people at Labour are exhausted after the Scottish campaign to react to their Shadow Chancellor's speech. The reaction of the conference hall was far too flat for the last conference economy speech before the general election. And the reason for that was that there were no new announcements.

Ed Balls wanted to spend his Today programme interview talking about his plans to cut the deficit by limiting child benefit increases to 1 per cent and cutting ministerial pay by five per cent. But he had two big stories to overcome that people seem more interested in. One is his accidental wounding of a journalist, which has made front page news, and the other is English votes for English laws, which is the even bigger front page news from the Labour conference so far (and with a newsless day in the hall yesterday, who can blame journalists for going after something else?). He tried two tactics, which rather cancelled one another out. The first was to argue that there was no 'easy solution to our constitutional situation', which was a suitably boring, no-quotes answer.

Ed Balls playing football each year at Labour conference is almost as big as Ed Balls Day. The Shadow Chancellor always participates enthusiastically in the annual hacks vs MPs match. Sometimes, he's a little too enthusiastic. Like today, when he accidentally wounded lobby journalist Rob Merrick. Still, the pair made up by the end of the match. Those who predict the General Election campaign will be a bloody battle were more correct than they could ever have imagined.

Tristram Hunt's speech to the Labour conference was short and sweet. It was laden with sweeteners for party delegates, which is as things should be at these events, but perhaps his Blairite predecessors are feeling a little sour after the Shadow Education Secretary spent a fair bit of his time on the stage denouncing the principles they once espoused. Clearly the aim was to keep the party faithful happy - and they'd spent the session beforehand making quite clear that they wanted a screeching reversal over many of the Coalition's education reform - because Hunt also attempted to galvanise them by talking about Michael Gove. And when he got bored of talking about Gove, he talked about Nicky Morgan, who he described as 'a "Continuity Gove", auto-pilot Education Secretary'.

Ed Miliband wouldn’t have wanted to spend his big, pre-conference interview talking about English votes for English law but that’s what he had to do on Marr this morning. Miliband was prepared to concede more English scrutiny for English legislation. But it is clear he won’t back English votes for English laws. He even argued that it was hard to describe tuition fees, which don’t apply in Scotland, as an issue just for the rest of the UK. listen to ‘Ed Miliband: 'In favour of greater scrutiny' of English issues by English MPs’ on Audioboo Miliband was much happier when the interview turned to the minimum wage and Labour’s plan to increase it to £8 by 2020.