Why the Labour Left should support Ed Balls feat. the elephant in the room
(Update: at comment #4 has a rejoinder to my ‘elephant in the room argument which needs to be read in conjunction with this post.)
A line in the sand
There comes a time in electoral politics when you draw a line in the sand. Today is one such day.
So today I move on, from somewhat tempered, cynical-as-usual support of Ed Balls for the labour leadership, to full-on, ‘vote for him, he’s great!’ support.
This reflects a general trend in healthy party politics. Argue it out as much as you want, but when it comes to it, be clear about whom you support, and why.
Anyone mad enough to go back through my old posts in 2009-May 2010 will see that trend – a move from a critique of New Labour and its ways towards unswerving support for Labour in the general election. Some people will see that as hypocrisy; I see it as priorities.
It’s the same with my local politics. Sure, I have problems with the group of councillors I lead, and I’m quite happy to argue the toss with them about loads of stuff – but when election time comes (as it has come byelection-wise in West Lancashire), it’s us against the class enemy.
Simple as.
So here’s my now unequivocal support for Ed Balls.
The political in the economic
I don’t agree with Ed Balls on everything, but he’s by far the best leader of the Labour party we’ve got on offer. He’s also, importantly for the general readership of this blog, by far the best leader the Labour party has got to offer its more leftwing membership.
This is a bold claim, I recognise. Certainly, it’s not one I expected to be making when the campaign started in June, and it needs justification.
First and foremost, Ed Balls is an economist by training and trade, and understands better than any of the other candidates that at the heart of proper leftwing politics lies the question of the reordering of economic relations between the those with money, and those without.
2010, when Ed Balls seeks the leadership, is not 1994, when Tony Blair sought and won it.
In 1994, the economy was nearing its best point in the capitalist economic business cycle, and over the next few years new Labour had the luxury of, effectively, not having to worry about the economy as I went about its business.
Thus, we ended up with a Prime Minister who simply didn’t understand economics, and whose basic instruction to his new chancellor Gordon Brown was not to start tinkering with the current economic relationships between capital and labour, but just pass the readies over when they were needed.
Under Blair, income inequality and poverty became technical issues, not political issues. The establishment of the Social Exclusion Unit in 1997, with its 17 different ‘Policy Action Teams’ made up of a host of experts on housing, drugs, education etc., reflected this move to a technocracy operating within and never questioning the economic basics.
2010 is not 1994. Now there is a huge threat to the working class, but there is also an opportunity to put the economic relations between capital and labour back at the very heart of the Labour party.
To do this, we need to be clear right now about deficit spending, in the way that Ed Balls has become increasingly clear in recent weeks, culminating in this statement in the my interview with him:
I’m not sure that a deficit goal is the right goal. I think that maintaining confidence for servicing debt makes much more sense. The right way to do that is to have a strong and growing economy. That’s why I don’t think there’s a problem with deficit financing at this stage in the economic cycle.
We need to be even clearer.
Deficit spending is a supremely political act of democracy, because it shows that it is the democratically elected body of the state which directs – through its judicious manipulation of the money supply – the overall use of resources.
In taking this role away from capital – who have managed it so badly to date – there is a clear statement of who is in control. The economic becomes the political.
Of all the candidates, only Ed Balls understands this relation between the political and the economic (although I suspect he is still grappling with the consequences). It is only Ed Balls, therefore, who can be an effective opposition leader in the terms the Left wants opposition to happen – a serious challenge to the existing economic status quo.
And just as Brown was powerless to change the economic status quo (even had he wanted to) under the fundamentally conservative instructions of his political master Blair, so will Balls be powerless under the same kind of politics-without-the-basics leadership of either of the Milibands.
2010 is not 1994, and in some ways we are better for that, because the choice is clearer: we need someone who understands the politics of economics in the top job, not acting as a lackey to someone who doesn’t.
The Elephant in the room
This is my main contention as to why Ed Balls should become leader. I have covered other reasons in my previous support post – his strength to date in taking on the opposition in particular – and I won’t repeat that here.
But there remains the elephant in the room for the Left when it comes to Ed Balls, and it would be remiss of me not to deal with it directly.
For many on the Left that I have spoken to or read, Ed Balls has impressed in opposition, and in his articulation of a different political economy.
Yet they won’t vote for him because of his ‘abhorrent’ views on immigration.
This antipathy goes back to an Observer piece on 6th June, in which Ed Balls said, in the context of a long article:
Europe’s leaders need to revisit the Free Movement Directive, not to undermine the union, but to make it economically and politically sustainable. That means re-examining the relationship between domestic laws and European rules which allow unaccompanied migrants to send child benefit and tax credits back to families at home.
This assault on the free movement of labour within the EU in particular, alongside the acknowledgment that he understood where people like Gillian Duffy were coming from - was taken as evidence that Ed Ball’s views on immigration were beyond the pale for the Left, and this became a self-reinforcing concept as time went on; it became accepted wisdom that Ed Balls was good on the economy, but unacceptable on immigration and by extension on social policy in general.
Hence Phil at AVPS, for example:
For example, whereas Ed Balls combines a Keynesian orientation to the economy with a near-Powellite view on immigration, Ed Miliband eloquently argued that immigration was a lightning rod for discontent.
Now, while I think the ‘near-Powellite’ description goes a bit far, I agree that on 6th June Ed Balls did not do himself a good turn in the eyes of the Left, and I too was somewhat horrified.
I wrote to tell him so, and I marked him down in my silly-but-fun scoresheet.
However, what also needs to be recognised is that he hasn’t – as far as I’ aware – repeated the offence, and there is a good deal of evidence that he’s thought through what he said and moved towards Ed Miliband’s ‘lighting rod for discontent’ explanation.
That is why, when I went to hear Ed Balls speak in Warrington last week, I asked him this question:
Can you tell us two things about political organisation or policy over which you have developed your views through communication with members and supporters since the leadership campaign began.
His response on political organisations (about how hard it is to become an MP if you’re not in the in-crowd) need not detain us, but his second answer was the reassurance I had been looking for that his views had matured appropriately.
He again went back to the Gillian Duffy incident – understandable enough in an audience with a folk memory of the election – and said he understood these sentiments. However, he was careful now to say that such issues were best resolved by meeting the needs of working class people – he noted housing in particular. The Woolas-strand reference to the need to tighten immigration was gone. Now of course he’s not stupid.
Taken together, my view is that while the Left was quite justified in taking him to task on the 6th June interview, the fact that he has not repeated that kind of statement and that he now finds a different way of answering the question – talking of provision, not restriction – is enough for me to keep ed Balls at number one on my voting list, and I hope others on the Left will see it the same way.
I’m surprised, three months on, to find myself voting for Ed Balls. If you’d asked me in late May, he’d have been at No.4 or no.5.
But then, wasn’t the time to change your mind what the long leadership campaign was supposed to be about?
“However, what also needs to be recognised is that he hasn’t – as far as I’ aware – repeated the offence…”
– Yes, he has, in his recent interview on the PM programme on Radio Four. He banged on and on about immigration in the same stupid way, being very nice about Gillian Duffy, saying things he couldn’t possibly deliver on (rewriting European agreements, basically), in the course of generally pandering to Very Real Concerns. It’s true that the interviewer raised the subject of immigration: Balls didn’t steer the conversation over to it. But he had lots to say, and I found it pretty unpleasant.
Chris
It’s just as well I added the ‘as far as I’m aware’ caveat then.
I wasn’t aware of this interview – I accept I should have been – do you have a link to it/date for it at all? Intellectual honesty (what Barney demands of me) demands that I listen for myself and re-evaluate. If it as you say – and I hae no reason to doubt it – that would be disappointing, not least as my own question to him was designed precisely to work out where he was at now.
It was on Thursday, August 19, about 5.30pm on Radio Four. Not sure you can get broadcasts more than a week old, though, through the BBC website.
Since it doesn’t seem to be available, let me try to describe as dispassionately as I can what he said on it (and this is from memory, so no guarantees of reliability). The interviewer raised the subject of immigration. Balls began by talking about his reaction on hearing what Gillian Duffy had said: he presented it as if it were evidence of Brown being out of touch with the Labour grassroots: he thought she was a bigot, but Balls thought hers was the authentic voice of the Labour electorate. He went on to make noises about how the government had made a mistake in allowing so many Poles, etc., into the country after EU accession, how there should have been more transitional measures, but he also, I think, talked about failure to implement the EU Working Time Directive. The interviewer pressed him on what he would do differently now, as leader / PM / whatever, not about what he thinks went wrong in the past. And he focused his remarks on migrants who come here, with children back at home, who claim benefits or tax credits because they have children, and who send the money back to support their children at home. He wanted to block those remittances, he said.
Ed Balls has indeed fought an increasingly good campaign on economimc issues and I sympathise with your view. In particular, I agree that he “understands better than any of the other candidates that at the heart of proper leftwing politics lies the question of the reordering of economic relations between the those with money, and those without.” I also share your dislike of his views on immigration. I’m therefore still voting Abbott as my first preference. However, as I argued at http://www.leftfutures.org/2010/07/ed-miliband-if-hes-not-your-first-choice-make-him-your-second/ , whoever we vote for as our first preference, we must also state a preference for Ed Miliband to prevent the election of his brother.
I could be tempted to put Balls as my first or second preferences, but not for the reasons stated by Paul. My reason would be as follows: David Miliband is out, Dianne Abbott is good on campaigns, but nutty as a fruitbat, spoiled by hypocrisy and a tad of racism, and besides Balls has been explicit that Labour under hias watch would be a campaigns opposition. Andy Burnham is low on ideas anywhere but on health but good on passion, and Ed Miliband has been getting worse on ideas and the right side of the political tracks as his campaign has gone on, whereas Balls has got better in this respect.
Part of me thinks Balls would make a better Chancellor judging by his recent performances, but then he has of late been the most vocal and coherent about opposing the threat from the government. I think if he continues this path, he would start to put a block on efforts by the Tories, and Tory supporters, to mock him, and perhaps even leftists who cite his proximity to the last government as reason to see the back of him.
Though another reason to be dubious of him is his character. It is unquestionable that Balls should have done more to stop the scapegoating and media frenzy over Baby P and Sharon Shoesmith – and for a time I wouldn’t have touched him with a bargepole because of this affair. On the back of this, I perhaps simply find him disagreeable, but he is making a good crack of it on the economy, so I don’t want to see the back of him, but I’m debating to myself whether he’ll go on my ballot sheet or whether I inactively assume whoever it is who gets the majority of first and second preference votes will stick Balls in their cabinet.
One thing I will stress, which strangely we’re seeing less and less on Paul’s blog entries here, is that we on the left should view our favourite of the leadership contenders as best of a shit bunch, and not forget this.
Chris @4: Thanks for setting this out. I think it’ll be good to add a note to the top of the article setting this out.
The key question is whether this changes my view on ed Balls as number 1 (not important to others perhaps, but important to me). I think in the end the answer is no. While there is no doubt that this interview content is disappointing, and that I would prefer ed Balls to have got over pandering to rightwing sentiment enough to offer up an alternative argument on immigration, a judgment on candidate suitability is always going to come down to priorities and ‘weighting’.
Just as I accorded significant weighting to ‘political economy’ in my silly but not that silly scoresheet thing, so I know thing that his economic competence (and here I wish he more radical) and development of a real market-combatting position does outweigh his less than desirable views on citizens from beyond the narrow confines of this state.
That said, I respect (and have always respected) the arguments of those who think that such views on the essentials of civil liberty and basic decency make him unacceptable as a leader of Labour, however refined his economic thinking is.
Jon @5: I think my response to Chris above more of less cover it in respect of your position. It all depends on what weight be give to the dispatate attributes we want from a Labour leader. On balance, my 2nd pref will go to Diane Abbott on the basis of her avowed leftwing policy stance and because it’s important that this is recognised in the overall voting tally. I’m afraid I don’t concur with the view on ed Miliband, whom I now consider the weakest of the candidates, for reasons I’ll set out if I get time.
Carl: In fact your key point in support of ed B – that he’s potentially best at the campaigning opposition leader – was the main thrust of my earlier post in support of ed Balls, so I don’t think we’re that far apart.
As regards the fact that my posts have tended to move away from ‘the best of a bad lot’, i have tried to explain why that is the case at the start of my post, where I talk about the ‘line in the sand’ that I always tend to draw between internal debate/doubt and explicit support.
do you apply your ‘line in the sand’ when you talk as yourself the blogger and yourself the Labour councillor? When you have internal debate/doubt you might still admit so as a blogger, in a personal capacity, but I can see why you as a councillor will express explicit support even in the face of this? Did that make sense?
On the Channel 4 debate not half hour ago, Balls said that immigration from the new EU members had been too fast, and that he would only support constructive immigration, or words to near enough that effect, so I think it’s safe to say he still has a way to go on immigration policy.
Oh tosh, Brown and accolytes were just as committed to all the labour light stuff – they pushed most of it through at the treasury, and as for technocratic Brown/Balls was the brains behind the economic stuff, accepting of NAIRU, obsession with inflation targets above employment, PFI funding – and relegating the poor to s set of technocratic non fixes at the margins. Brown lot were better than Blair – a coward rather than a demented idealist tory hearing voices – but so what.
Brown grew a brain in the crisis, and I welcome the Keynsian conversion but it was too late. Edd Balls has the unique qualification of being both right wing (look at record) and unelectable.
Just find it hard to support anyone who was part of the whole Iraq fiasco.