Ed Balls is learning how to make the trains run on time. “When I was six I got a Hornby set but it was nowhere near as good as this,” says the shadow chancellor as he sits in the simulation room of the Wales rail operating centre in Cardiff. Invited to press a large orange button by the supervisor, Balls says: “This isn’t going to stop anything, is it? Not that I’m risk-averse . . .”
In less than two months, Ed Balls hopes to be at the controls of the UK’s £1.8trn economy. If Labour forms a government after the general election and he becomes chancellor, he will be one of the best-qualified – and most polarising – people ever to have entered the office. No recent occupant has had more experience of high-end policymaking.
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