Ed Balls on the ‘shocking truth’ about Tony Blair and Gordon Brown

The former cabinet minister blames rivals for the leadership for dividing the twin engines of New Labour, writes John Rentoul

Labour’s record would have been worse if Blair or Brown had agreed too much (Getty)

Ed Balls came to King’s College London yesterday to talk to students on the “Blair Years” class that I teach with Dr Michelle Clement and Professor Jon Davis. His main argument was that Tony Blair and Gordon Brown basically agreed on everything, despite attempts by Brown’s rivals to divide them.

He said that the Blair-Brown partnership was a model for subsequent governments. He disagreed with Rachel Reeves – his successor as shadow chancellor – who this month said that she wanted to copy the relationship between David Cameron and George Osborne. “They worked very well together as a team,” she said. “You couldn’t play them off against each other.”

Balls said this was the wrong example to follow. “The times when Labour got into trouble, in retrospect, were the times when Tony Blair and Gordon Brown agreed too easily,” he said. “They were more effective when they were challenging each other, and therefore the outcome was the result of that creative tension between the two of them.”