Balls warns 'irrational' Labour may be out of power for good

Former Shadow Chancellor says a party seen as anti-business cannot win an election

Ed Balls appears on the Andrew Marr Show (BBC)

Ed Balls has warned that Labour may never form a Government again because voters see it as irrational and anti-business.

The former Shadow Chancellor spoke of his fears that, under Jeremy Corbyn, Labour had become a party of protest, rather than a genuine contender for power.

Mr Balls said Mr Corbyn and John McDonnell, the current Shadow Chancellor, now had to choose whether to change course and put together a policy platform to try to win the next general election.

And he told a meeting at the Liverpool conference: “I think the Labour party will survive, but I don’t know whether the Labour party is going to survive and be a party that can realistically intend to be in Government. That all depends now on how Jeremy responds.

“That’s what’s happened over the last 18 months and if that trend caries on it’s a catastrophe – but you can’t rule that out.”

Mr Balls – who lost his Westminster seat last year - agreed that, for the past 20 years, Mr Corbyn and Mr McDonnell had given the impression that they wanted to abolish capitalism, rather than reform it.

He added: “If we are seeking to overthrow it, we have got no chance of winning the general election.

“If people, I’m not saying Jeremy, people around Jeremy, continue to say that working with business is bad, that the BBC is part of a right-wing conspiracy, that when the electorate say they believe in this policy position they are wrong and that anyone within Labour who criticises them is a Tory neo-liberal - if that’s what they carry on doing, we have absolutely no chance of winning the next general election and we will let down all those people.”

Mr Balls also argued that a mass recruitment of more moderate members, to outnumber the Corbynite forces, was probably the only way to turn end the “crisis”.

Without that, if he was still an MP, he would “think to myself, at the moment, there is absolutely no chance of the Labour party getting back to rationality.”

Mr Balls also said it had been the wrong time for Owen Smith to launch a leadership challenge, adding: “People were in no way prepared.”

And, speaking at a Guardian event to promote his book, Speaking Out, he ruled out a political comeback, saying: “I had 20 years – and shelf lives are getting shorter.”