Ed Balls update

Today Ed Balls was made Shadow Chancellor, and all I can say is: about time! Well, I can also say congratulations, since although it’s not a proper job and he won’t get a payrise, it’s still a promotion of sorts. But seriously, it’s about time. If I’ve understood Ed’s career correctly, his were a large portion of the brains behind Gordon Brown’s chancellorship, and various ideas like giving the Bank of England more independence were largely his. Then it became apparent that Brown might one day need a Chancellor of his own, so Ed got himself elected in 2005 so he’d be eligible for the job. In 2007 Brown became Prime Minister as we all assumed he eventually would, and... Alistair Darling was made Chancellor. I don’t completely blame him for the global economic meltdown that happened largely on his watch. I expect that things would be different if he’d acted differently over Northern Rock, RBS and the rest, but the issues are very complicated and I don’t really understand them. I doubt he did either.

I never worked out why Brown picked Darling as his Chancellor. Perhaps he offered Ed the job, but Ed saw the crisis coming and knew that nothing could be done that would leave the Chancellor looking good, so he did what Hague should have done in 1997 and bided his time. Or perhaps Brown got cold feet the way Sven did with Theo Walcott at the 2006 World Cup. Either way, now it’s finally Ed's job to tell us all how we ought to be dealing with the mess the economy’s in, and to oppose Mr Osborne when he does something else. I’m looking forward to seeing how he does. If he does a really good job, I might even vote Labour next time. Probably not though, because I don’t live in a marginal and I’m still annoyed about those wars.

Oliver Goldsmith

A while ago it was reported that Ed Balls, then Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, was going to be able to decide what schoolchildren would have to read in their English classes. ‘Great!’ I thought. ‘Now that this power has been put in the hands of someone accountable to people without children, I can bother him with my ideas on the subject.’ So I did. I didn’t get a proper reply (I understand this to be his secretary's fault), and he can’t do anything about it now anyway, because Alarm Clock Britain voted him out of government. I haven’t changed my mind though. Kids should read Oliver Goldsmith. So here’s what I said to him. I could rewrite it, but this way I can kill two birds with one stone, letting you know why kids should read Goldsmith and the tone I use when I write to ministers. Are you reading, Mr Gove?

Dear Mr Balls Gove,

I hear there's a plan to have ministers choosing the books on the English syllabus, and that if it passes it will be up to you. My suggestion is that the kids read Oliver Goldsmith, and here's why:

1) He's unique in that he has only three major works, and they're a novel (The Vicar of Wakefield), a play (She Stoops to Conquer) and a poem (The Deserted Village), so it's feasible to do the whole canonical part of an oeuvre spanning all three major literary forms. The poem's long and less fun so extracts are probably the way to go with that.

2) He's funny and the novel isn't long, so the kids might actually read it.

3) The play's still performed quite a lot and is hilarious, so the kids could go on school trips to see it.

4) He's eighteenth century, which is under-represented in schools, and shows that the century wasn't just about interminable epistolary novels and brilliant but barely comprehensible proto-postmodernism.

I know you're busy, but if you haven't read the book or seen the play, at least give them a go. They're not long, and they're hilarious. The poem's less fun, like I say.

Yours,

Michael Bench-Capon