It is clear that trouble for Brown mounts hourly but even this may
still not be enough to shift him! So a reshuffle of a shrinking rump
of loyalists may still be on the cards and Ed Balls is one of the few
senior loyalists left.
Here Jeff Randall examines the man pencilled in to be Chancellor. A
uniquely unpleasant man, he is also monstrously incompetent . Now
read on - - - - -
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx cs
=================================
TELEGRAPH 5.6.09
No amount of reshuffling will solve the mess Labour has made
Ed Balls's track record at the Treasury makes him unfit to be
Chancellor, argues Jeff Randall.
As a guide to the scale of Gordon Brown's problems, it is hard to
beat the call by Lord Mandelson for Labour MPs to cut out the
treachery. When the plotting, scheming and mutinies become too much
even for the Hartlepool hatchet man, you can be sure that central
command has lost touch with its servicemen. The mission is on course
for oblivion.
Were it not for the fact that the United Kingdom's finances are less
convincing than Margaret Moran's expenses claims, recent events could
be dismissed as Westminster's contribution to our light entertainment
schedule. It takes no great leap of imagination to see a televised
version - Britain's Got No Talent - as an opportunity for ministers
to display their unsuitability for high office. Simon Cowell to
Hilary Benn: "You have the personality of a handle. I presume there
was no mirror in your room. You should sue your tailor."
While the Government has collectively lost its marbles, individual
members retain a rounded sense of humour. The funniest performance
this week was Agent Harman's insistence that the inelegant departure
of her colleagues, Beverley Hughes and Jacqui Smith, was prompted by
a desire to spend more time with their families. One wonders how
strong that pull would have been had the party's poll ratings not
been smaller than Hazel Blears's dress size.
Elliot Morley, who claimed £16,000 on a mortgage that existed only in
his head, did his bit for the comedy circuit by insisting that he
would step down at the next election because "I have to think of my
health and my family, both of which have suffered". Marvellous, eh?
Mr Morley is a former agriculture minister and special-needs teacher.
As Scotland Yard considers whether to launch a criminal
investigation, he clearly has his own special needs, including a
better excuse than an "accounting mistake" for drawing taxpayers'
money to which he was not entitled.
At the current rate of Cabinet desertions, the Prime Minister's
Tuesday meetings in Downing Street will resemble the Mary Celeste:
the chairs are warm, the coffee is hot, but nobody is there. When the
"phantom ship" was discovered, the sextant and chronometer were
missing. At
Number 10, it's the moral compass that's been lost. Captain Brown is
heading for the rocks.
In a desperate attempt to avert disaster, he is said to be preparing
the plank along which Alistair Darling will be forced to walk. With
the Budget's borrowing forecasts already looking hopelessly ill-
judged, and a sense of drift undermining the Treasury's confidence,
Mr Darling seems set for the plunge. Favourite to take his place is
Ed Balls, the Schools Secretary.
It has been written that Mr Balls is "widely respected in the City".
Really? By whom? I spend a lot of time in the Square Mile, and I have
yet to meet anyone who regards him as anything more than the Prime
Minister's deckboy. While Mr Balls's mastery of post-neoclassical
endogenous growth theory has passed into apocrypha, his score on
pensions and banking regulation was D-minus.
As Mr Brown's little helper on stealth taxes, Mr Balls was
responsible for the 1997 raid on private pensions that turned a
system of gold-plated retirement provision into the base metal of
unaffordable deficits and fund closures. Thanks, in part, to the
genius of Eddie Brainbox, our pension pots have lost more than £100
billion in 12 years, and final-salary schemes are rarer than MPs with
one home. His claim that the CBI had lobbied for the move was false,
crude spin from a politician dedicated to message manipulation.
Even more damaging to Britain's national interest was the Balls-
inspired Tripartite Memorandum of Understanding, Labour's botched
reform of banking regulation. At the time, it was heralded as a
stroke of wizardry, because it freed the Bank of England to set
interest rates. The Bank's role in supervision, however, was removed.
By transferring this to the Financial Services Authority, Balls knew
that neither institution would have sufficient power to stand up to
the heavy mob at Gordon Brown's Treasury.
When the crunch came, with the unravelling of Northern Rock, the new
regulatory framework did not just fail - it fell apart. The division
of responsibilities had removed focus. Cracks opened up in the
monitoring system, through which the bank crashed with ease.
In a recent paper for the Centre for Policy Studies, Sir Martin
Jacomb, a former chairman of the Prudential, who was a Bank of
England director between 1986 and 1995, concludes: "Gordon Brown's
desire for ultimate control ended in failure. This Tripartite
Arrangement has been a disaster. the Bank of England lost its most
important weapons in supervising the banking system, having neither
influence over, nor information about, the behaviour of banks."
Did I say D-minus? Sorry, it wasn't that good. I marked Mr Balls's
paper incorrectly. Never mind: as the schools minister who presided
over the Sats fiasco, he will know just how tricky this examinations
lark can be. In keeping with his boss's custom and practice, he
refused to apologise for the chaos and delays, shifting blame to the
American company that handled the tests and the Qualifications and
Curriculum Authority, which oversaw the contract.
If you can bear it, take a peek at his website, or online columns for
his constituency press in Yorkshire. Mr Balls's pitch for votes is
uncomplicated: stick with us and we promise to throw more cash at you
than the other lot will. Just as the bills for Labour's profligacy
are threatening to wreck Britain's credit rating, he makes no mention
- or, at least, none that I could find - of how all this money would
be raised.
Is this the man we want in charge of the nation's till? Hardly. He
lacks judgment and integrity. With his wife, Yvette Cooper, working
as Chief Secretary to the Treasury, he and she represent the most
dangerous double act since Bonnie and Clyde, only without the glamour.
Britain's debt is running out of control. It is clear that our fiscal
imbalances are not cyclical but structural. We are spending more than
we can afford and more than we are likely to earn. The gap will not
close when recovery comes. No amount of Cabinet reshuffles is going
to fix this problem.
Professor Niall Ferguson, the economic historian from Harvard, told
me that "a looming fiscal crisis will require a cut to expenditure
and even higher taxes. "And I cannot help thinking that the British
Government, as weak as it is, is completely incapable of doing either
of those things in an effective way."
Still in doubt? Well, let me leave you with this comment: "It's all
over for Brown and Labour. The abyss awaits." Its author? The
Guardian's Polly Toynbee, high priestess of the Left.
Who am I to disagree?
Posts
