[Osem]

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics...ing-politician

During his decade as Gordon Brown’s closest economic adviser, he was regarded in Whitehall as among the most powerful éminences grises in British political history. It was Balls who first advocated Bank of England independence in a 1992 Fabian Society pamphlet, Balls who devised the fiscal rules that established New Labour’s reputation for “prudence” and Balls who drew up the five tests for euro membership in the back of a New York taxi with Brown in 1997.

“Deputy chancellor” was his unofficial title during this period. But in conversations I have had with colleagues past and present, Balls more often emerges as “the real chancellor” (a sobriquet also applied to George Osborne’s chief adviser, Rupert Harrison). Jonathan Powell, Tony Blair’s former chief of staff, has written of how Blair believed that it was Balls, “rather than Gordon”, who was “running” the Treasury. As a non-economist – Brown’s degree, like Osborne’s, was in history – the then chancellor is said by MPs to have been “dependent” on Balls’s expertise. The former Labour cabinet minister Peter Hain told me, “[Balls] is by miles the best economist in parliament: technically, theoretically and in policy terms. Nobody can touch him.”

I think he was far more closely involved in what was going on at no 11 but the irony remains and I wish him well in obtaining a permanent position as far away from here as possible...