I would be very surprised if Tom Baldwin and Ed Balls didn’t have a meeting early on to consider how the new Director of Communications of the Conservatives might ‘attack’ Ed Balls. The media, broadsheets and tabloids, have tried to use the simple picture of Ed Balls as a “bruiser”, but it seems that the Coalition is taking the line of attack that “you must never put the pyromaniac in charge of fire safety“.
There are some consistent names put forward in the ‘runners and riders’, although some have even fleetingly mooted the idea of Nick Robinson, Laura Kuenssberg and Paul Staines being ideal for the post, which apparently carries a formidable salary of £140K per year. Tim Montgomerie from ConsHome has been exceptional at explaining the Tories’ policy to peers and the public; he is perhaps the unofficial Tory Director of Communications.
Here are some observations of the four key favourites.
Gutto Harri
Gutto Harri is not overtly political, reflected in the fact that he doesn’t comment himself much on politics – is said to be well connected in Conservative circles. Harri went on to notch up 18 years at the BBC, and built up good contacts with some of the Conservative Party’s more gregarious politicians. It has become common knowledge in political circles that Harri was approached last year about becoming the party’s director of communications. According to Tory sources, Harri first spoke to strategy director Steve Hilton and then went to Cameron’s Oxfordshire home to discuss the issue.
George Pascoe Watson
Another candidate is George Pascoe-Watson, the Sun’s former political editor, who left the tabloid after 22 years for public relations in October 2009. His departure came just weeks after Murdoch-owned newspaper switched allegiance to the Conservative party and he was one of the paper’s leading spokesmen explaining the decision. He reported in the Sun in March 2009:
CHILDREN’S Secretary Ed Balls came as close to saying “sorry” as anyone in Government yesterday for Labour’s failure to stop the banking crisis.
Pascoe-Watson has been keeping an eye on Balls, reporting that Balls now accepted that ministers failed to spot the dangers involved in the enormous risks taken by banks during the economic boom. He is a strong supporter of Osborne, and has never acknowledged even vaguely remotely why Cameron’s policy is reckless and what the rationale for Balls’ policy is.
Benedict Brogan
Benedict Brogan is now the Deputy Editor of The Daily Telegraph and is described as “one of Westminster’s keenest observers”; his range of analysis across a number of diverse political areas is indeed remarkable. Brogan has appeared to have been fair in reporting Balls’ assessment of the economy. For example, one story in 2009 provided that:
Crisis is worst for 100 years, says Balls
Brogan wrote at that time:
Ed Balls, the Children’s Secretary, who was Mr Brown’s chief economic adviser for a decade, said: ‘The economy is going to define our politics in Britain in the next year, the next five years, the next ten and even the next 15 years.
‘These are seismic events that are going to change the political landscape. This is a financial crisis more extreme and more serious than that of the 1930s and we all remember how the politics of that era were shaped by the economy. We now are seeing the realities of globalisation, though at a speed, pace and ferocity which none of us have seen before. The reality is that this is becoming the most serious global recession for, I’m sure, over 100 years as it will turn out.’
On the relationship between Ed Balls and Ed Miliband, Brogan himself conceded that on September 26th 2010:
Politically, it would be easier for Ed M to reward Ed B. Their outlook is similar and it would be an ideologically more stable arrangement
Ian Birrell
Ian Birrell is a former deputy editor of the Independent and worked as a speechwriter for David Cameron during the 2010 election campaign. His pugnacious approach is exemplified here, in this remark from 21 August 2009:
Later, I wrote an article for a weekly journal that ended with a challenge to the then Chancellor, Gordon Brown. As I entered the dining room, Mr Brown gave me a wolfish smile and ushered me to sit down between him and Ed Balls, before the pair took me to task for the next half hour. Both seemed unabashed statists when it came to health, who saw more money as the answer to all problems and had little sympathy for the idea of introducing competitive or patient-led elements.
If Cameron wishes to have a robust defence of marketisation, and portray the State as ‘evil and bulky’, Birrell is perhaps his man. If he wants to counter the arguments that Balls will produce as to why the current Tory policy may produce worsening GDP, increasing unemployment and a decreased level of growth, Birrell (and indeed George Pascoe-Watson) may not be suitable. The economy and the NHS are going to be defining issues for Miliband, Balls and Baldwin in the next few years, arguably.
