Balls - Speaking out: lessons in life and politics

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Epub ISBN: 9781473537880

Version 1.0

Published by Arrow Books 2017

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Copyright Ed Balls 2016
Cover photo Mark Harrison/News Syndication

Ed Balls has asserted his right right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

First published in 2016 by Hutchinson

First published in paperback in 2017 by Arrow Books

Arrow Books
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www.penguin.co.uk

Arrow Books is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 9781784755935

To my Mum and Dad, for giving me the best start in life

To Ellie, Joel and Maddy the next generation for putting up with all the madness

And above all to Yvette, because weve truly been all in this together

ED! ED! ED! Ed!

The chanting from the crowd at the Leeds Arena was reaching a crescendo, as Katya and I stood in the spotlight waiting to hear if we had won that nights Glitterball.

Just a few minutes earlier we had performed our signature Gangnam Style routine we must have done it five hundred times by now, in rehearsals, on the TV, at public appearances, school visits and on chat shows, and here on the Strictly live tour.

But even so, even if I was the only person who knew why, tonight felt special. It was my first time back at the Arena since 8 May 2015, when my political demise was announced live on national television.

That night, in the hall, jubilant Conservative campaigners jeered as I stared into the blinding TV lights and delivered my impromptu concession speech, while my own supporters and campaigners wept and hugged each other.

Now, twenty-two months later, the sell-out crowd on the other side of the curtain in Leeds were there united in happiness and laughter, whatever their politics, ages and backgrounds, ready to cheer the local-boy to the rafters and award him that nights Tour trophy the only night on the entire tour that Katya and I lifted the Glitterball.

Backstage, my sequinned, spray-tanned self looked over at the little ante-room where Id waited to accept defeat that night in May, and felt a strange surge of euphoria. I wanted to grab my old self and say: Youre going to be OK. Youre never going to believe how, but the next time youre here, youll feel great. And by the way, Jeremy Corbyn will have been elected Labour leader twice, Britain will have voted to leave the EU, David Camerons political career will be finished, and Donald Trump will be the President of the US.

All so gloriously strange, appallingly absurd and apparently unpredictable, and yet if theres one lesson life has taught me ever more consistently over the years, its that the unexpected is the only thing you can count on coming to pass, in life and in politics.

Id come into political life aged twenty-seven, giving up a career in economic journalism because Id finally decided I wanted to be doing it, not writing about it. And back then I rather brashly believed that I knew exactly what needed doing, and would be able to direct events the way I saw them.

I like to think I was right in some respects championing Bank of England independence, and working to keep Britain out of the euro among them but in so many others I had a huge amount to learn, and would be tossed and turned by events along with everyone else.

At the end, Id had twenty-one good years in politics, but I had to see it that way: twenty-one memorable years out of a life that will touch wood last four times that long, and contain many more great experiences and opportunities, just some of which Ive so far been able to grasp, on the Strictly stage and elsewhere.

This book is my reflection on what Ive learned in those twenty-one years, a fond farewell to that part of my life, recorded while the memories are still fresh. I hope it can reveal something about the realities of political life: how good and bad decisions come to be made; what the modern politician needs to survive (and occasionally succeed); and the strange challenge of trying to remain a proper person at the same time as being a politician.

There are a lot of things I wish I could tell my twenty-seven-year-old self, the one who left the Financial Times to go and work for Labour; but he had to find them out the hard way.

It was a very different political world back then: no 24/7 news channels; no social media; Id never sent an email; and the only mobile phone Id ever seen in the flesh was owned by Gordon Brown, so large that it took two hands for him to hold. It was a world in which there was much less commentary, much more privacy, and much more time to think about how to deal with an issue or a story.

There is no doubt that politics is more challenging now because of all the changes since then. We live in an era where trust in mainstream political leaders and parties has slumped to an all-time low. Outsiders to the extremes of right and left have been making the political running. And politics is more short-termist, more populist, more unstable, more risky than at any time in my life, as the current uncertainty over the impact of Brexit and the future of America makes abundantly clear.

But it is now, at a time when politics is more diminished and unpopular than ever before, that we need it most. Whatever else may have changed in the last two decades, politics is still essentially the same beast. People put forward ideas, they try to win arguments, they try to gain trust. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, and when its the latter, politics is just as unforgiving as it has ever been.

And in the end, for all of the bizarre moments and terrible misjudgements, it is still a noble calling; still a pursuit of important causes; still a profession which needs, more than ever, the best and the brightest to join it in the years and decades to come. I hope this book will inspire some of them. I hope it will show why politics matters and how it can help make a difference. And I hope, too, that it will provide some interest, ideas and entertainment for everyone interested in what life is really like on the political stage, and elsewhere in the limelight.