Labour MPs tell Ed to sack Balls or we will lost the next Election: Shadow Chancellor under fire after he blocks extra health tax.

  A whispering campaign against Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls has started

  Mr Balls is fighting battle with Andy Burnham over their manifesto policies 

  He has categorically ruled out a ring-fenced tax to boost funding for NHS

  MPs have now put Labour's Ed Miliband under pressure to sack Mr Balls

  A whispering campaign against Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls has started

  Mr Balls is fighting battle with Andy Burnham over their manifesto policies 

  He has categorically ruled out a ring-fenced tax to boost funding for NHS

  MPs have now put Labour's Ed Miliband under pressure to sack Mr Balls

Read more here:

His memoirs, serialised in the Mail, convulsed Westminster. Now Gordon Brown's spin doctor gives his withering verdict on the two Eds: Paranoid, confused, and their policies are a great, steaming pile of fudge Daily Mail

Ed Miliband and Ed Balls.

  Damian McBride claims Miliband and Balls run 'dysfunctional' Labour Party

  They're confused, lacking clear policies and a target audience, he claims 

  Says Labour could win by treating election like a Gordon Brown-era Budget 

Just nine months before the next General Election, the Labour Party has no positive messages to communicate to anyone about why they should vote for them. It has no policies which will persuade them, and no clear idea who its target audience is. And it’s being run in a totally dysfunctional way.

So how do the two Eds - Miliband and Balls - do it? How do they overcome historical precedent, a hostile media, a sceptical public and a nervous Party, and return Labour to power in 2015?

To my mind, it’s simple: the two Eds have to stop thinking of next year in terms of an election, and start thinking of it like one of those Gordon Brown Budgets they used to work on together.

I cannot recall one Labour policy announcement over the past year that performs those feats. Ed Miliband’s measures - rent controls or an energy price freeze - are usually populist enough but rarely stand up to scrutiny. Ed Balls’ announcements (such as his national infrastructure commission) usually pass the FT test but go entirely unnoticed in the pub.

Read more here:

Further Reading here:

'No clear idea' and a 'steaming pile of fudge': Ed Miliband under extraordinary attack from Gordon Brown's key aide who warns Labour election plan is 'totally dysfunctional' Daily Mail

Ed Miliband

·        Labour leader failing to communicate with voters, Damian McBride claims

·        Former spin doctor says Mr Miliband has no persuasive policies

·        Also attacked Labour's refusal to apologise for its record in office

·        Today's attack comes in updated version of McBride's tell-all memoirs

·        He was spin doctor for Gordon Brown but quit over a plot to smear Tories

  Ed Miliband’s ‘totally dysfunctional’ leadership tonight comes under extraordinary attack from former Labour spin doctor Damian McBride.

In an updated version of his sensational tell-all memoirs, Mr McBride warns Labour has ‘no clear idea’ of who it is trying to appeal to and a ‘great, steaming pile of fudge’ instead of key policies.

He says Mr Miliband, with whom he worked for years in the Treasury, has ‘managed to blend the worst of Tony Blair’s “me against the world” isolation with the worst of Gordon Brown’s “they’re out to get me” paranoia.’

In an apparent swipe at Ed Balls, another former ally, he says Labour has yet to persuade voters that ‘we’ve learnt our lesson’ by admitting where ‘the last government screwed up’.

The shadow Chancellor has resisted all advice to concede Labour’s mistakes during its 13 years in power.

Mr McBride concludes: ‘Labour currently has no clear idea who its target audience is, no positive messages to communicate to anyone about why they should vote for the party, no policies which will persuade them, and is being run in a totally dysfunctional way.’

Read more here:

'Most people are worse off under the Tories': Britons have experienced their biggest fall in earnings since 1874, claims Labour's Ed Balls

Labour revives plans for 15% death tax for estates of the deceased, provoking outcry from Tories who claim 'pensioners deserve better' 

In the week the economy returned to pre-crisis level... Why I, as an ex Labour Minister, think Ed Balls MUST apologise for the mess he left us in, writes DIGBY JONES Daily Mail

Ed Balls

But last week’s economic figures weren’t some flash in the pan. Britain is back. A sustainable, deep, far-reaching recovery, not built on house price inflation, has arrived.

Inflation lower than Japan, unemployment lower than America, growth higher than Germany (and on Thursday it was even warmer in England than in Honolulu!). 

Take these facts:

·         The most productive car plant in Europe is the Nissan factory in Sunderland.

·         The Jaguar Land Rover plant in Liverpool has moved on to 24/7 working to cope with demand for its Range Rover Evoque from China, let alone everywhere else. They’re even building a new engine plant in Wolverhampton.

·         The Airbus put together in Toulouse has more British parts than French or German.

·         General Motors is actually closing a car plant in Bochum, Germany (the first such closure in that country since the Second World War) with 4,000 job losses, and expanding its plant at Ellesmere Port instead.

Construction, financial services, retail, manufacturing, creative industries, and the services sector are all going in the right direction. 

Read more here

Digby Jones.