Ed Balls
(Picture: Credit: ITV / Good Morning Britain)Ed Balls warned Sir Keir Starmer on Tuesday against making mistakes that Neil Kinnock did in 1992 with early big election promises.
Former Cabinet minister Mr Balls, now a presenter on ITV’s Good Morning Britain, argued that the next General Election, expected in 2024, is “Labour’s to lose”.
But Mr Balls, who was Gordon Brown’s Treasury right hand man when he was Chancellor, also warned against complacency.
“Everything you say now will be with you on election day.” he told Times Radio.
“So the temptation to rush out and say, here’s the plan. Here’s what we’ll do. The danger is it happened to Labour in 1992, Neil Kinnock and John Smith had made big commitments on child benefits and pensions two years before, which was billions of pounds.
“By the time we got to the election when the economy was in real trouble and people worried about jobs, they had these massive commitments on things which didn’t feel like the number one priority.
“So you have to be really careful that you think that everything you say you know will still be the right thing to have said, in one and a half, two years time.”
Mr Kinnock, now a peer, lost the 1992 election in a surprise defeat to John Major.
A string of polls now put Labour some 20 points ahead of the Conservatives, though some have suggested the gap is narrowing.
Surveys also show Rishi Sunak is more popular among voters than his party.
Strictly Come Dancing star Mr Balls, who was also Children’s Secretary, argued: “This is now Labour’s election to lose, rather than a real challenge for Labour to win. That changes the whole dynamic for Keir Starmer and for Rachel Reeves and the team.”
But he stressed that Labour, and particularly the party leadership, needed to learn the lessons from the mid-90s.
“In that period, 95-6, 7, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, they never really believed Labour was going to win,” he said.
“They were never complacent about that. Because of course, they’d lived through the run-up to the 92 election when Neil Kinnock was the leader and people thought Labour would win because the economy was having a big recession.
“And then Labour lost that election. And so people like myself, Jonathan Powell, for Tony Blair, spent like two years planning for government. But that wasn’t something that Gordon and Tony allowed themselves to do.”
Sir Keir recently unveiled major plans to reshape how Britain is governed, with far more devolution of power, jobs and funding away from London and Westminster.
He has also promised a Labour government would create tens of thousands of jobs through a Green New Deal, as well as training thousands more doctors and nurses.
However, his poll ratings suggest many voters still remain sceptical about whether he would make a good Prime Minister.
