Why Ed Balls Should Be Labour Leader

In a sense, the last Labour government ended too soon. Not for the country - there is no way we could have afforded any more "leadership" from Gordon Brown. But for the Labour party itself, the fact that their last government ended before they were utterly discredited by having to make the same sort of cuts that they lambast the Tories for - and the fact that our warped electoral system meant that their disastrous showing at the last election didn't completely consign them to electoral oblivion - means that many think that their project was not wrong; it was just curtailed before the benefits could truly be seen. Consequently, the party is not ready to accept the implications of its defeat, and as a result undertake the sort of ideological change needed to make them once again capable of winning, and performing less than abysmally in, government.

Ed Miliband isn't the right man to show them this. A slightly chippy little prig, he has all the charisma of a depressed garden gnome. When the party loses the next election, its members will assume it is because Miliband Minor was leader, and actually they needed someone with just an iota of charisma and a little bit of fight in them to actually take on Cameron. As such, it will miss the point that its policies are just as atrocious as its leader. The Labour party has come to represent in political form the old truism that the very definition of madness is to keep doing the same thing while hoping for a different result.

Thus, the Labour party needs a more capable leader - or at least one able to do the opposing bit inherent in being leader of the opposition. Miliband can't do it; he's a black hole into which anything of any interest is sucked and lost forever. There is one man up for the challenge, though. One man ruthless enough to have forced himself to the very top of Labour party politics, despite having the personality of a smug, rabid skunk. Yes, this is the time for Ed Balls. He needs to be Labour leader.

Of course, he wouldn't change the party's course - he's as bought into Brown's plans as anyone, not least because he was Brown's henchman for so many years and helped to create those plans in the first place. And the people aren't going to warm to Ed Balls either, in the same way as no-one really warms to the angry man in the bar who is just looking to kick someone's head in for fun. But what Balls would be able to do - rather like Howard did for the Tories when he became their leader - is oppose. Balls would fight Cameron. He would fight the coalition. He would marshall his not inconsiderable talents at being a massive arsehole towards his opponents, and make life tough for the Con-Dems in a way that Miliband Minor seems utterly incapable of achieving. And when he lost the next election the Labour party would have no choice but to accept that their defeat wasn't just down to the failure to oppose; they would have to see that the policies they use to oppose the coalition were as much to blame as their choice of leader.

So this is Ed's time to shine - in as much as such a person is ever capable of actually shining. But I doubt whether Ed will ever become Labour leader. I rather think he is the Michael Hesletine of his generation and party; a high-profile, clear contender for the leadership of his party with only one fatal flaw - that the people in his party don't really like him, so aren't going to make him leader. Yet the Labour party could do far worse than Balls. Hell, they have done far worse through their choice of their current leader.