Will UK Put Balls In Government?

[Sue U]

Sorry, I couldn't resist.

Ed Balls to Announce Bid to Lead U.K. Labour Party (Update1)
May 19, 2010, 6:39 AM EDT
By Robert Hutton and Thomas Penny

May 19 (Bloomberg) -- Ed Balls, the former aide of Gordon Brown who rose to the post of children’s secretary in the last U.K. government, will announce he’s running for the leadership of the Labour Party, his office said.

Balls, 43, will make the announcement later today. Four lawmakers have said they want to lead the party, with David Miliband and his brother Ed Miliband already announced and John McDonnell using a speech to the Public and Commercial Services Union today to put his name forward.

“This leadership contest is a great opportunity for Labour,” Balls wrote in an article for the Independent newspaper yesterday. “We must listen before we pronounce. I have not rushed to a decision on whether to stand in this contest.”

The race to succeed Gordon Brown as leader will be Labour’s first contested leadership election since 1994, when Tony Blair was chosen following the sudden death of John Smith. Brown replaced Blair in 2007 without a challenge. The result will be announced on Sept. 25, the day before Labour begins its annual conference. Brown resigned as prime minister and Labour leader after the party lost the May 6 general election.

Balls entered Parliament at the 2005 general election and clung onto his seat in northern England with a margin of just over 1,000 votes more than the Conservative candidate in this month’s election.

Union Support

A former Financial Times journalist, he was a close political ally of Brown with strong support among labor unions. He advised Brown before Labour came to power in 1997, and when Brown became finance minister he went with him to the Treasury.

He is credited with convincing Brown to hand power over interest rates from the government to the Bank of England in 1997. He also turned Brown against adopting the euro when a dozen European nations started using the currency in 1999.

Balls became a junior Treasury minister in 2006 and was promoted to the role of secretary of state for children, schools and families in June 2007, when Brown became prime minister.

He graduated from Oxford University in 1988 and studied at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He is married to former Work and Pensions Secretary Yvette Cooper. She has ruled herself out of the leadership contest.

McDonnell, 58, also has close links to the U.K.’s union movement and worked for the National Union of Mineworkers and the Trades Union Congress before entering Parliament in 1997. He is chairman of the Socialist Campaign Group and was deputy to Ken Livingstone as leader of the Greater London Council from 1984 to 1985.

McDonnell will announce his intention to run in a speech to the PCS conference in Brighton, southern England, today, his office said in an e-mailed statement. He failed to gain enough nominations from Labour lawmakers to force a vote when Brown became leader in 2007.

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-0 ... ate1-.html

[Daisy]

It would be just plain wrong to have a Prime Minister Balls.

[Gob]

There is a Scots expression "a real head the ball" or "hied the baw", which indicates someone is retarded after too much contact of their cranium with heavy objects.


How apt.

[The Hen]

At one stage it looked like the future leader and deputy leader of the Liberal party down here was going to be Abbott and Costello. (Though not in that order.)

[dales]

Oh, please let it be so....