Ed Balls may be an unpleasant bully, but he is no fool.  He knows Labour is going to lose the election and he knows he will be blamed almost as much as Brown, for he is Gordon’s homunculus.  The politics of reckless dividing lines, big government over-spending, the vicious briefing against internal party enemies, his personal use of “Mr” McBride to poison politics and his low, lying Machiavellian ways are not going to be faulted for Labour’s defeat if he can help it.  If they are, his ambitions will be thwarted. In private he and his few allies are blaming the prospect of defeat on Hoon and Hewitt’s recent divisiveness.

Labour’s defeat will, he and other loyalists claim implausibly, be nothing to do with the years of kamikaze politics from Balls and Brown…