When the GDP figures are published tomorrow morning at 9:30am, the cry will go up from the Tories and their media allies that Ed Balls’s credibility has been destroyed. They might not like Ed Miliband, but they reserve a special animus for the shadow chancellor. For them, the return of growth proves that Balls’s critique of George Osborne’s austerity programme was fundamentally wrong; Labour will not be taken seriously until he is thrown overboard.
If Balls is such a liability to his party, one wonders why so many Conservatives exert so much energy calling for his departure (the answer, as some privately acknowledge, is that he is one of Labour’s greatest assets). But put this Machiavellian gamesmanship to one side, the claim that it is Osborne, not Balls, who has been vindicated doesn’t bear scrutiny.
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