Ed Miliband should sack Ed Balls - and as brutally as possible

The Liberal Democrats’ antics over Lord Rennard have obscured the truly dreadful performance of the shadow chancellor, Ed Balls

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The truth is that Mr Balls isn’t any good as shadow chancellor. This is an open secret in the Labour Party (where discussions about his successor are ongoing) and also I suspect the Treasury, which may prefer not to draw attention to the shadow chancellor’s weakness because they no longer think of him as much of a threat.

Political journalists have also been aware of the Balls problem for some time. I think that we have failed to highlight it because we like the man. There is something splendidly human about his pugnacity, his sheer love of the game, his vulnerability and his passion. He is robust, engages in argument, gets up from the floor when he has been knocked down. It is particularly admirable that he has stayed in mainstream politics in the wake of Labour’s 2010 defeat when so many of his former colleagues – James Purnell, Peter Mandelson, Alan Milburn etc, etc – have walked away to make money.

And yet, as shadow chancellor, he is a failure. Monday showed that he cannot damage George Osborne even if confronted with an easy target. There are various reasons for this, one of which is Mr Balls’s total identification with the economics and politics of the Gordon Brown era. The basic reason why Britain is in such an economic mess is because Mr Brown, advised by Mr Balls, spent too much and fuelled a boom. We are coping with the resulting bust. There is no getting away from this

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/nick-clegg/9897764/Ed-Miliband-should-sack-Ed-Balls-and-as-brutally-as-possible.html