His latest idea: "fair tax cuts for families"
I bet that phrase went down well with the spin doctors and focus groups.
Surely, a 'fair tax cut' would be for everybody, not just families. What has Ed got against single people? What has Ed got against couples without children? What has Ed got against pensioners?
I'm guessing that we will never know. This little PR gem will be forgotten almost as fast as 13 years of a Labour government.
Lets take a closer look at the gospel according to Ed Balls:
Listen hard and you can almost hear the whispers in the Chancellor’s ear. ‘Steady as she goes,’ they murmur. ‘Hold your nerve, stay the course and eventually the recovery will come.’
Yes, those whispers come from just about every top economist, including the IMF.
Last week the Moody’s credit rating agency joined the chorus: the economic outlook for Britain is negative, but nothing can be done.
What they actually said was that Osborne's plan was right, but that there were political risks to the implementing it. They said that if he failed to cut the deficit then we would be at risk of being downgraded.
A downgrade would put up the cost of borrowing. That would mean more interest payments, which would mean less money for families.
In my view, the Chancellor does still have the power to shape events. Next month’s Budget is his last chance to make a real difference to Britain’s economic prospects.
Is this like Ed Miliband's "xx weeks to save the NHS" (insert your number here). Actually, Osborne has many more chances to make a real difference. He is the Chancellor, not the Shadow Chancellor. He gives a budget and autumn statement every year.
At some point, growth will return to the British economy. Eventually, unemployment will start to fall. But how much more pain must families and businesses endure in the meantime, and how much long-term damage will be done as a result?
So Ed acknowledges that the Osborne plan will work - growth will come back, unemployment will fall.
How much pain and how much damage really depends on how the Eurozone handles the Greek debt crisis. If it wasn't for the Eurozone economies going into recession our economy would be growing now.
So he must ignore the do-nothing voices. The Chancellor should deliver a Budget for jobs and growth – with fair tax cuts for families at its heart.
So Ed means that Osborne should repeat his last budget - which was a budget for jobs and a budget for growth, and which cut taxes for everybody thanks to raising the tax thresholds.
Nice to see him so supportive.
Only eighteen months ago, the Government was so confident their plan would work: cutting the size of the state would pave the way for a private-sector led recovery.
It is working. Employment is creating 20,000 new jobs per month. Those are private sector jobs which are replacing lost public sector ones.
Of course, unemployment is also rising by 12,000 jobs per month, but that is because of the temporary slow down caused by the Euro crisis.
But it hasn’t worked.
It hasn't gone exactly to plan, but nobody predicted that Greek economy would implode. I would say that it is working but not as quickly as we would like.
The recovery stalled well before the Euro crisis started to have any impact on Britain. And the plan has not only failed on jobs and growth, but also on the very terms George Osborne himself set: balancing the books by 2015 and keeping the credit rating agencies happy.
The stall happened after, not before the latest Eurozone crisis which began in May. The economy was growing earlier in the year and has slowed down in the last quarter of 2011. It did the same in the rest of Europe, only they slowed down faster.
Osborne did not predict the Eurozone crisis, but there again neither did Darling. If Labour had won then they too would be seeing slower growth and cutting the deficit taking longer.
The rating agencies like Moody's are happy - as long as Osborne keeps to Plan A. They would only downgrade us if we switched to Plan B and gave up on balancing the books.
In the US, which has taken a more balanced approach to deficit reduction and supported the recovery, the economy is now bigger than it was before the crash and unemployment is falling.
Their "more balanced approach to deficit reduction" is no deficit reduction. Their deficit is over $1 Trillion PER YEAR and is currently rising. Obama is trying to make their deficit rise faster by spending money on a stimulus package to save his job.
The number of people working in America is falling, the number working in the UK is rising.
American unemployment is falling because people are leaving the work force. They have given up on finding work. In the UK they are rejoining it and looking for work again.
Here in Britain unemployment is rising, our economy is still nearly 4 per cent smaller than before the crash and we are now facing a weaker recovery even than in the 1930s.
Here in Britain unemployment is rising a bit, but the numbers in employment is growing faster. The economy is creating jobs, just not as fast as we would like.
Our economy is smaller than before the crash thanks to the extremely deep recession that happened under Labour.
We are facing a weak recovery because we are cutting the deficit and because the private sector borrowed too much. Both problems were caused by the Labour government losing control of the economy.
Of course, tough decisions are needed on spending, tax and pay to get the deficit down. But if you go too far and too fast, choke off the recovery and push people out of work, you end up borrowing more and permanently weakening the economy.
So what 'tough decisions' are Labour offering us? They are for the cuts but against every single cut. They want to reverse the VAT tax rise. They say the cuts are "too far and too fast" but they are also complaining that they are too slow because Osborne will miss his target of ending the deficit by 2015.
Somehow Ed Balls thinks you can cut the deficit without cutting jobs. Most of the deficit is spent on employing people in the public sector. The problem is that the private sector tax base is too small to pay for them.
The solution is to create more private sector jobs and that is what is happening. There are more people working - 20,000 per month more. That is putting people into work, and work that creates taxes to pay for some of those public sector workers.
And it not just spending cuts which have gone too far and too fast, but also tax rises on families and pensioners – like the hike in VAT, which crushed confidence, costing a couple with children £450 per year each year.
So only couples with children pay VAT? And they all pay this magical £450 per year?
VAT was raised as part of cutting the deficit (which Ed tells us is good because otherwise you "permanently weakened the economy". It was done early because the cuts were back loaded (which Ed tells us is good because he doesn't want to "cut too fast".
Rich people pay more VAT because they spend more buying things. Poor people spend more of their money on zero rated items like food. If you cut VAT you cut taxes for rich people more than you do for poor people.
That is why the Chancellor should announce a temporary reversal of his VAT rise. This is part of Labour’s five point plan for jobs, which also includes tax breaks for small businesses taking on extra workers and bringing forward essential infrastructure investment.
So now Ed doesn't want to cut the deficit which is "permanently weakening the economy". He wants to put it up again.
Ed wants to give tax breaks for small businesses (presumably like the ones that Osborne already made) but not big businesses. Osborne is cutting taxes for all businesses so that they will create more jobs. Remember, Labour planned to raise National Insurance which would have destroyed jobs.
Ed wants to bring forward infrastructure spending, which will put up the deficit and mean slower growth in future years.
Remember, Labour did this 'bringing forward essential infrastructure investment' a few years ago. That is part of the reason why growth is slower now - because today's infrastructure spending has already been spent.
Such a tax cut now would boost confidence, help families feeling the squeeze and help get our economy moving again. It would cost £12 billion to do it for a year. Given the government is set to borrow £158 billion more than planned because of slower growth and higher unemployment, the argument that we cannot afford this boost is absurd.
A tax cut would not boost confidence in the markets. It would lead to a downgrade according to Moody's.
That would put up the cost of borrowing which would mean deeper cuts. That wouldn't help families or get our economy moving again.
It would cost £12 billion to do it for a year. What happens the next year? And the year after?
It would move forward spending from next year to this year. That will lead to slower growth next year. That will lead to higher unemployment next year. That would mean borrowing a lot more than an extra £12 billion.
Some people may be surprised to see Labour prioritising tax cuts. But in a crisis there is a premium on what works effectively and quickly to get our economy moving.
We have seen Labour priorities tax cuts before. Remember the 10p tax rate?
We aren't actually in a crisis. The economy is slow, but not collapsing.
Remember, Q4 2011 it dropped 0.2% (which was less than most of the Eurozone). However, in Q4 2008 it dropped by a whopping 2.3%. Now, that was a crisis - one that Labour were responsible for.
But if George Osborne can’t bring himself to reverse his VAT mistake, he has other options. For the same amount of money, he could cut the basic rate of income tax by 3p for a year. Or raise the income tax personal allowance to over £10,000. Or increase tax credits for almost 6 million working people by around £2,000.
What VAT mistake? Osborne inherited a £150 Billion deficit. He could have cut spending from the start or put up VAT and cut spending later.
So according to Ed, if Osborne can't bring himself to destroy growth next year by cutting VAT he should do it by cutting income tax. Note a good option either.
So according to Ed, Osborne could increase the tax allowance to £10,000. That is actually Osborne's plan, but he will do it when the country can afford it.
So according to Ed, Osborne could increase tax credits for 6 million working people. What about the other 24 million working people? Don't they deserve tax cuts?
I think here we see some real Ed Balls. The poor deserve tax cuts (or credits) and the rich should pay higher taxes. However, the "rich" are not bankers, they are 24 million people out of the work force of 30 million. Now we know who really wants to squeeze the middle.
It would be better to cut VAT now – it’s fairer and quicker and would help pensioners and others who don’t pay income tax. But any substantial tax cuts to help households and stimulate the economy would be better than doing nothing.
So Ed has already given up on his tax cuts for families. Now he wants to cut VAT for everybody, including pensioners.
If you stimulate the economy by bringing economic activity forward you dampen the economy later. Today's slow growth is largely down to having to stimulate the economy in a very deep recession. We don't need to repeat that now when growth has just paused.
Without that decisive action in the Budget to boost growth, I fear we are in for a lost decade of slow growth and high unemployment which will leave a permanent dent in our nation’s prosperity.
We are in for a tough decade because we borrowed too much. Labour held a great party but the hang over is a bitch. Labour told us they had ended boom and bust then gave us the worst bust in living memory.
That is what caused the permanent dent in our nation’s prosperity.
It is a Labour shaped dent.
Remember the 1980s. Of course, action was needed then to get inflation down from its 13 per cent peak. But who now doubts that the depth of the resulting recession did permanent damage?
Remember the 1970s. That was inflation was caused by a Labour government.
Nobody denies that the early 1980s were tough. It was a tough job weaning the economy off the inflation drug.
The second half of the 1980s was great. That was because a Conservative government took the tough choices and fixed the economy. Labour were opposed to each and every of those tough choices.
Labour know how to break the economy but they don't know how to fix it. Worse, their solutions involve breaking it more.
Manufacturing jobs and companies lost – never to return. Small businesses bankrupted – losing skills, ideas and potential. Infrastructure plans first postponed, eventually dropped and never resurrected. Adults and young people out of work for years, leaving a permanent scarring effect on their skills, their health, and their ability ever to work again.
"Manufacturing jobs and companies lost – never to return" is also true of the last 13 years of a Labour government.
"Small businesses bankrupted – losing skills, ideas and potential" - many more were created by a liberated economy.
"Infrastructure plans first postponed, eventually dropped and never resurrected" except now they are being resurrected. How long have did Labour talk about HS2 or cross rail? Now they are getting built.
"Adults and young people out of work for years" - he is talking about the last Labour government again. Youth unemployment doubled from 2004-2009. Labour created 1 million jobs and gave them all to immigrants instead of British workers. They allowed millions of able bodied people to hide from work on disability benefits when work is the way out of poverty.
But thirty years on, the risks are even greater. After all, China is currently producing more graduates a year than the whole population of Scotland. And adults in Brazil are already twice as likely to be running their own business as Britons.
True. The risk of repeating 13 years of Labour running the economy are unthinkable.
We need better educated graduates, not more graduates. More importantly we need school leavers who can read and write. Former Education Secretary Ed Balls should be ashamed of Labour's legacy on education.
At the very time that we should be putting in place the long-term reforms we need – on skills, infrastructure and long-term capital market reform – the British economy is stuck in a rut with companies afraid to invest, long-term unemployment rising and no industrial policy.
We are finally getting long term reforms like fixing university funding, making our schools educate children instead of chasing targets, building long term rail infrastructure, fixing the broken financial services regulator which allowed the banks to fail. The British economy is coming out of the rut that it had fallen into under Labour.
Exports are rising again. Manufacturing is returning after falling in the Labour years. We are taking people off disability because hiding them from the long-term unemployment numbers doesn't help them or the public finances. We have pro-industry policies, not a government designed industrial policy. We are cutting red tape not wrapping businesses up in it.
In 1925, Chancellor Winston Churchill bowed to pressure from his advisers and stuck to the policy of returning sterling to the Gold Standard. He regretted it for the rest of his political life.
In 1976 Labour were forced to go to the IMF because they were spending too much. Now it is Greece that is going to the IMF, yet Labour voted against our IMF contribution that they signed us up to.
Our deficit when Labour left office was larger than that of Greece, yet Labour now want to borrow more so that they can spend more.
Our economy was heading towards a spectacular crash like Greece is enduring today. This government has changed direction and is saving the economy from the same fate.
For all our sakes, I hope this Chancellor has the courage to ignore the do-nothing voices and take decisive action to boost growth. But time is fast running out.
I have given up hope that Labour's Shadow Chancellor has learned the lessons of the 2008 Credit Crunch and he is ignoring the voices that say that Labour is not trusted on the economy and must change direction.
Time is running out for Labour as long as Ed Balls is running their economic policy.
For all our sakes I hope he keeps his job.
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