Further evidence that Ed Balls wants the economy to fail, so he can succeed

By Mark Wallace
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Further evidence of Ed Balls' miserabilist tendencies in today's Mail on Sunday:

Defence spokesman Jim Murphy threw down the gauntlet by insisting that the party had to revise its message now that the economy was clearly recovering.

He clashed with Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls by insisting Labour could no longer argue the economy was ‘flat-lining’ – a taunt made famous by Mr Balls. 

Sources say the Shadow Chancellor retorted that there was no guarantee the economic upturn would last.

That's right, the man setting Labour's economic policies sees the UK's failure as key to his own success. Stick to the same old line and hope for the worst.

No wonder he seemed overjoyed when times were bad - and he seems so frustrated now that the economy is ticking up.

Ed Balls so badly wants the Government to fail, he can't even celebrate Britain's successes

By Mark Wallace
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The other day I picked out an example of Labour's miserablism:

"Ed Balls' apparent enthusiasm when the economic data is poor, and his deflation when the figures improve"

It's a sad fact that Balls can barely contain his desire for things to go wrong in the economy so that he can promote himself on the back of a crisis.

Given the howls that suggestion generates from some quarters, I now owe a debt of gratitude to the Shadow Chancellor himself for proving the point.

Picking up the slack: Labour's economic doomsayers are proved wrong, again

By Mark Wallace
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There's always been something of the religious mantra about the Left's refusal to believe that the British private sector was capable of picking up the slack by creating jobs to replace those lost in the public sector.

Perhaps it's a lack of imagination which leaves them unable to conceive of jobs being created through mechanisms which they don't understand. Perhaps it's egotism, driving a belief that their actions in government will always be more effective than anything the private sector could do. Perhaps it's simply a desperate hope that economic suffering will help them to prosper politically.

Consider the following six quotes, from senior figures in the Labour Party, prominent commentators and Ed Miliband:

Ed Balls, Hansard, 12 October 2011:

"We were also told that public sector job cuts would be more than outweighed by the rise in private sector jobs, but I am afraid that employment is falling because the private sector has been unable to deliver the recovery we were promised. It has been a complete fantasy."

Ed Miliband's "predistribution" speech, 6 September 2012:

"I'm afraid the Government believed its own propaganda – that they could cut as far and as fast as they liked and the private sector would pick up the slack."

Alan Johnson's first speech as Shadow Chancellor, 18 October 2010:

"...in the current climate there's nothing inevitable about the private sector picking up the slack, when the public sector starts laying people off." 

 SImon Jenkins, The Guardian, 27 October 2010:

"David Cameron and business leaders claimed in unison that the private sector would "take up the slack" of some half a million workers ejected from the public sector. They cheered, but nobody could illustrate how that would happen."

Westminster Digested, The Guardian's "satirical" take on politics, 1 December 2011:

 "Cameron:...Only a moron would have imagined the private sector would suddenly pick up the slack in the worst depression since the 30s!"

David Blanchflower, in the New Statesman, 16 March 2012:

"The private sector isn't picking up the slack"

Then consider the new figures released today by the ONS, which show that:

"Private sector employment has jumped by 1.3million to a record high of 24.1million under the Coalition Government – while public sector employment has fallen by 423,000. But last year the increase in private sector jobs was almost five times the fall in public sector work."

So despite Ed Balls' fervent hopes, it turns out the private sector could and did take up the slack - and then some.

To paraphrase a great Norwegian: Karl Marx, John Maynard Keynes, Keir Hardie, Gordon Brown, Eddie Izzard, Len McCluskey...can you hear me, Polly Toynbee? Your boys took one hell of a beating.

Shapps's minions torment Labour over its "plans to increase borrowing by £2,960 for every working family".

By Paul Goodman
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Part of the horror of Opposition is that one is pronged by a Morton's Fork.  Make no policy commitments, and you've nothing to say.  But make policy commitments, and the Government will merrily tot them up and reach some terrifying total.

Labour's Posh Boys (and Girls)

By Mark Wallace
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Back row: David Miliband, Ed Miliband, Ed Balls, Harriet Harman.

Standing in middle: Hillary Benn, Chuka Umunna.

Front row: Fiona McTaggart, Tristram Hunt, Tessa Jowell.

It's become a regular refrain from Labour ranks that the Tories are posh. The infamous Bullingdon photo, which Carla Millar today mimics above, is used as shorthand to pick at the number of privately schooled men and women in the Cabinet and in the Parliamentary Conservative Party.

The failed attempt by Labour to make class an issue in the Crewe and Nantwich by-election, with activists dressed up in top hats and tails, stands out as an example of their enthusiasm for the subject.

Balls adapts for a growing economy

By Peter Hoskin
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Politicians may have decamped to their constituencies for the summer, but the routine business of Westminster continues. In particular, this week, we’ll have the usual political set-to over the latest growth figures. Most economic soothsayers expect them to be rather encouraging – twice as big as the rate achieved between January and March – and the latest sign that Britain is returning to sustained growth. George Osborne will be pleased.

But what about Labour? What’s their shtick going to be if we keep on growing? The answer is in an article by Ed Balls for today’s Guardian, in which he basically does two things. He tries to put this recovery in an unfavourable context, talking of how “we would actually need to see growth of 1.3% a quarter for the next two years” to “catch up the ground we have lost on growth and the deficit since 2010”.  And he asks the fundamental question: recovery for whom? To which, conveniently, he already has his own answer: “there are growing signs that this nascent recovery is mainly benefiting those at the top.”

Bad polling news for Labour is as important as the good news for the Conservatives

By Mark Wallace
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A few weeks ago, a feeling was developing that the Conservative leadership had a good thing going. Labour were in a mess over welfare, struggling to define a line at all, still less to push a popular message. Then Woolwich happened, the news agenda understandably shifted and the momentum was lost.

Looking at polls in the last few days, it seems like that mojo may be back. ICM's polling for the Sunday Telegraph finds that 64% support Osborne's benefits cap, and a massive 87% agree with the Chancellor that benefits should be cut for migrants who refuse to learn English. The longer-term picture looks positive, too - Ipsos MORI's intergenerational research shows the young are far more enthusiastic about entrepreneurship and self-reliance, while they are increasingly sceptical of high taxes and generous benefits. As I wrote recently, they are also voting Conservative in greater numbers.

But the good polling news is not just that the Conservatives are doing fairly well - it's that Labour are doing spectacularly badly.

The main economic problem for Miliband isn't content - it's credibility

By Paul Goodman
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I've written before that the instinct of Ed Miliband and Ed Balls, as the next election approaches, will be to close down the gap between Labour and the Government on spending.  If they do, they will be assailed by the unions and their left, and asked the question which John Rentoul raises this morning: what's the point of voting Labour, then?  But if they don't, they will open themselves to a 1992 "double whammy"-style assault from David Cameron (who helped to plan John Major's triumphant assault on Neil Kinnock that year). This would be spearheaded by another question, asked not so much by Labour's base as by floating voters, namely: which taxes will you raise, then?

CCHQ is gleefully pointing out the weaknesses and contradictions of the two Eds' position - over borrowing for capital spending, for example.  But my instinct is that Rentoul is right, and that the closer the election comes, the more tightly the two men will try to screw the lid down on Labour spending pledges.  (He has also noted correctly that the conventional wisdom is wrong, and that the worse shape the economy is in, the more difficult is will be for Labour to pledge to borrow more.) Balls has form in closing down Labour weaknesses over spending: after all, he was at Gordon Brown's right hand when New Labour swept the electoral board in 1997, promising as they did so to keep to Conservative spending plans.

No, the main political problem for Labour - which Grant Shapps has duly latched on to - isn't so much the content what Miliband and Balls say as their credibility.  Balls is inextricably linked to Gordon Brown's debt and deficits.  And Miliband is trying to toughen Labour's position up three years into this Parliament.  Very simply, voters form impressions of new leaders early, a lesson that Tony Blair and David Cameron both grasped from the start.  Miliband is thus moving late and slowly - as he has done on both immigration and welfare.  He cannot take a position both as a left-wing equivalent of Margaret Thatcher, challenging a centrist consensus, and at the same time establish himself as Mr Fiscal Responsibility.

We’d better watch out: Labour and the Lib Dems are discovering more areas of political overlap

By Peter Hoskin
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Here at ConHome, we’ve tended to mention the areas of political overlap between Labour and the Lib Dems. Indeed, Paul Goodman highlighted two such areas – pensioner benefits and the mansion tax – only last week.

But there are now so many examples, with new ones by the day, that a brief list in in order. Here goes:

Six questions which show Ed Miliband's benefits cap is a mess - already

By Mark Wallace 
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Ed Miliband's attempted about-turn on welfare spending is a sign of how politically effective the Conservatives' welfare policies have been. Battered by repeated polling which showed his opposition to welfare reform was harming Labour, he eventually decided to change sides.

It's a remarkable shift - this is the man who has long been comfortable as part of an anti-cuts movement which employs the most barmy hyperbole to denounce any attempt to reduce the welfare bill. Those hearing the news that a Miliband has today committed to support a benefits cap might be forgiven for thinking the media have mixed up the brothers again - but no, it's definitely Ed. I checked.

In summary, he has now pledged that Labour would introduce a cap on the overall benefits bill.

It's a clever move, to a certain extent. On the surface, it sounds like he would mimic the Coalition's cap on how much any one family can receive. But dig into it, and this is a very different proposal, which raises some awkward questions for the Labour Party.

Here they are: