Personal Blogs

So, we have a new shadow chancellor. Alan Johnson has gone, and now we have Ed Balls.

Johnson famously said that he'd need to read a primer on economics. Well, at least he's honest about it. George Osborne, the real chancellor, is completely unqualified in economics too, although to be fair, managing the trust fund he got from his daddy is probably not that far off having to manage the budget for a small country.

Balls is a career politician who has never worked as an economist in real life, although of course he does have some experience in economics from having worked at the treasury. Whether the experience of being responsible for much of crashing the UK economy is good experience is another matter, of course.

But does any of this matter?

Actually, I don't think it does. I really can't see the point of a shadow chancellor. It's not as if the government are likely to listen to anything he says. And since we have a system of utterly tribal punch-and-judy politics, it doesn't really matter what the shadow chancellor thinks about any economic issue: in practice, if there is a vote on any economic issue in Parliament, the Labour party will vote against whatever the government does. No thought needs to go into that process.

In the last year or so before a general election, then the role of shadow chancellor is more relevant, as it is important in allowing the opposition to formulate their economic policy for their election manifesto.

But as we are potentially over 4 years away from an election, I really don't see that it matters whether the shadow chancellor role is taken by Alan Johnson, Ed Balls, or Donald Duck.