Civil war in Labour part 2; I told you so...now it's started

I posted the other day that Harriet Harman - awful on Question Time last night by the way - was spoiling for a fight with Ed Balls over spending cuts and austerity measures.

And so it has come to pass. Never one to walk away from a fight, Ed Balls has come out swinging in The Telegraph.

Predictably he has gone 'tough' on spending. Nick was right to highlight this weakness in Labour's record in his conference speech, and Ball's clearly has cottoned on too. (It's not rocket science)


"The public want to know that we are going to be ruthless and disciplined in how we go about public spending".

He has also promised to look at every line of government spending - an odd thing to say as it would have been nice if they'd done that during the 13 years they were in power.

Harman, by contrast, is offering a firm 'no' to all this...

She told The Spectator that Labour would not be "signing up" to the kind of spending cuts seen in the Coalition.

"Our argument against the Tories is that the scale and pace of their deficit reduction is self-defeating and hurting the economy and therefore making less money available," she said. "So we have got a fundamental economic critique — we would not be signing up to doing the very thing we think is hurting the economy"

I predict a tad of bother in the weeks and months ahead. apparently as (according to this article) Harman is also now demanding Ed Miliband makes her DPM if Labour win the next General Election...