Labour’s new feud: Ed versus Ed

Ed Balls is getting under the skin of Ed Miliband and his inner circle.

The misdirected email from Torsten Henricson-Bell, Ed Miliband's chief economic adviser, describing Ed Balls' comments on the economy as a "nightmare", plays into the script of the two Eds being as "bitterly divided" as Tony Blair and Gordon Brown once were, says Rachel Sylvester in The Times. However, this is "oversimplistic".

True, there are tensions between the Opposition Leader and the Shadow Chancellor, both personal and ideological. Balls has been described as "John Prescott with a Harvard degree", while Miliband is shyer and less laddish. On policy, "substantive" differences exist. Miliband wants to create a new, more responsible capitalism; Balls has a more traditional New Labour attitude and "worries about alienating business and distorting the market". But theirs is "not the only dynamic that matters". More than 30% of the Shadow Cabinet the clean skins' were not in Parliament at the last election. The party has entered a multipolar' world with various centres of influence, meaning there is "much less chance of mutually assured destruction".

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Emily Hohler
Politics editor

Emily has worked as a journalist for more than thirty years and was formerly Assistant Editor of MoneyWeek, which she helped launch in 2000. Prior to this, she was Deputy Features Editor of The Times and a Commissioning Editor for The Independent on Sunday and The Daily Telegraph. She has written for most of the national newspapers including The Times, the Daily and Sunday Telegraph, The Evening Standard and The Daily Mail, She interviewed celebrities weekly for The Sunday Telegraph and wrote a regular column for The Evening Standard. As Political Editor of MoneyWeek, Emily has covered subjects from Brexit to the Gaza war.

Aside from her writing, Emily trained as Nutritional Therapist following her son's diagnosis with Type 1 diabetes in 2011 and now works as a practitioner for Nature Doc, offering one-to-one consultations and running workshops in Oxfordshire.