Today Labour are forcing a vote on welfare reform and the strange thing about it is both the Tories and Labour are happy with the dividing line. Labour’s position is that they want a freeze on public sector pay and to raise benefits – hence the Tory attack poster this morning.

Labour argue that welfare reforms will take money from in work benefit recipents – strivers. IDS argued this morning that since Brown made 90% of workers welfare recipients that is inevitable. In an example this weekend the Observer warned that in-work welfare recipients could lose up to £470 per annum. Ignoring that the tax threshold hike will largely cancel out and compensate for that loss. Taking people off benefits and out of tax – ending Gordon Brown’s madly wasteful money-go-round…

Yvette Cooper and Ed Balls will lose their child benefit today, though with a joint income of some £130,000 they should be able to cope. Millionaires Ed and Justine Miliband probably won’t even notice it is gone with their £400,000 plus income. Labour have to sell on the doorstep paying welfare benefits to millionaires and raising benefits higher than workers’ wages. They think it can be spun as a vote winner…

Bad news for Balls as Polly Toynbee says out-loud what many on the left are already thinking. How, when Balls is so tainted with economic disaster could he possibly remain as Shadow Chancellor for the next election?

By the same logic, surely Miliband is equally covered in the Brown-stuff?

It’s taken some time but it seems the Labour kickback machine is getting into gear. The dividing lines are being drawn over the whether or not Labour back the Welfare Uprating Bill that will apparently be published this side of Christmas. In the meantime a nice row is brewing over the so called “Mummy Tax”. After granny and pasties, hidden hits are de rigueur these days. A friend of Ed Balls tells Guido this morning:

“Osborne effectively branding mums, taking time out from work to be with their new baby, as work-shy benefit scroungers is a big political mistake.”

Guido is not sure how a reduction in hand-outs is a “tax”, but the issue is certainly potent. Mumsnet will be unbearable today…

Ed Balls blamed his stammer for getting his script wrong yesterday but he still did not have anything to say this morning:

“I’m not going to come on the Today programme within 24 hours and start making ex cathedra statements without taking a proper judgement”

That didn’t stop his boss doing just that when he recommended implementing Leveson in full, just five hours after receiving the 2,000 page document.

Over the last year one of Ed Balls’ favourite lines has been to remind us that Britain was almost unique among our G20 friends in entering a double-dip recession. He gleefully twisted the knife in his conference speech, a column in the Tribune and various press releases, also reeling off the line in an op-ed for the Standard. Now that the Eurozone has fallen into a double dip this morning, it’s back to the drawing board.

A new hand gesture too, perhaps? 

Smiles all round in Corby as Ed Balls stepped out into the sun to support Labour candidate Andy Sawford this morning. The slightly forced expression on the shadow chancellor’s face got Guido thinking: it turns out that back in 2009 Sawford wrote a damning article for the Guardian accusing the government of presiding over a shambolic response to the infamous Baby P case. The minister in question was then Education Secretary Ed Balls.

“Take the government’s botched response to the Baby P case, which has made matters worse and put more children at risk. While the government was throwing red meat to the tabloids, and contributing to the hounding of social workers, it has only served to undermine an incredibly important profession.”

All neatly forgotten today. They’ll make a politician out of him yet…

Up and down the country millions of people are waking up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night, petrified by the spectre that has haunted them throughout the early hours. And who is this terrifying figure? A poll for the Mail says that the celebrity most likely to appear in our nightmares is none other than George Osborne. Ouch.

The Chancellor, rather harshly, comes one place ahead of Gordon Brown, a man who no doubt still keeps those who worked with him in those dark days of 2010 up at night. The likes of Katie Price, Anne Robinson and Marilyn Manson also make the list, with shadow chancellor Ed Balls coming in at number ten. No Maggie era Tories strangely…

Last week Guido flagged up the IMF pouring cold water over Balls telling Andrew Marr in January 2011 that there was no structural deficit pre-crash:

“The IMF declared today that Britain’s structural deficit was £38bn worse than originally thought and running at £73bn or 5.2% in 2007 – a year before that ‘global economic crisis’ Ed Balls hides behind. Here is what he told Marr in January 2011:“I don’t think we had a structural deficit at all in that period [before the recession]” Given the Shadow Chancellor’s fondness for throwing IMF statements around, will he now concede that he was wrong and say sorry?”

No, instead he chose to deny ever saying it. You be the judge…

It was less than fifteen minutes after the GDP news was announced before Balls’ people started calling for more borrowing and spending on the back of the news:

We now need plan to strengthen & sustain recovery – build houses using 4G funds, temp VAT cut, bank bonus tax to fund jobs for young people—
Alex Belardinelli (@abelardinelli) October 25, 2012

Two hours later they have has managed to scramble together a line:

“A one-off boost from the Olympics is welcome. But it is no substitute for a plan to secure and sustain the strong recovery that Britain desperately needs if we are to create jobs, get the deficit down and make people better off.”

Balls chooses to simply ignore the ONS stating that it only 0.2 of the 1% change was down to the Olympics.

Funny how abnormalities are only considered when the growth is positive.

The Prime Minister is not going to have a very nice day in the Commons as he faces his first PMQs since siding with Andrew Mitchell over the word of the coppers. One bit of news he will inevitably fall back on is the IMF declaring today that Britain’s structural deficit was £38bn worse than originally thought and running at £73bn or 5.2% in 2007 – a year before that ‘global economic crisis’ Ed Balls hides behind.

Instead of apologising for this economic terrorism that saw the UK the least well prepared country in the G7 to face a crisis and running one of the largest peacetime deficits in the developed world, Balls simply pretends it never happened. Here is what he told Marr in January 2011:

“I don’t think we had a structural deficit at all in that period [before the recession]”

Given the Shadow Chancellor’s fondness for throwing IMF statements around, will he now concede that he was wrong and say sorry?

We can autotune it if it makes it easier…

UPDATE: More ammo for the PM on what should be a tricky day – Employment has reached a record high at almost 30m, with unemployment down by 50,000 in the last quarter from 8.1% to 7.9%. Youth unemployment has also dropped below one million for the first time in a year.