Ed: We saw the financial crash of 2008 coming – but kept it quiet

NOW READ THE EXPLOSIVE FIRST EXTRACT OF MARTIN WINTER’S DEVASTATING MEMOIR

Monday, September 24, 2007 Labour Party Conference, Bournemouth

As I’m listening to Gordon’s speech it becomes apparent – he’s going to go for it and call a snap General Election in October.

Tuesday, September 25

I text Ed, asking him to call as I’m worried about Gordon’s speech yesterday. I can’t believe they think an early Election makes sense. He doesn’t come back to me. I’ve clearly outlived my usefulness!

Saturday, October 6

After months of speculation, Gordon Brown has announced that he will not be holding a snap General Election this autumn. Phew!

Two weeks later

Ed has popped in to see us unexpectedly.

His former bedroom has now reverted back to the children’s play-room and Carolyne, Ed and I all sit on the large settee, with Ed in the middle, while we talk.

I ask him what on earth led them to believe it was a good idea to call a snap Election. He responds: ‘I know what you’re saying, Martin. But if the truth be known, it was Ed [Balls] really who was wanting to call it.

‘He was desperate for us to go now… because it was our best chance of winning.

‘He kept arguing and arguing that we’ve got to go now.’

And then he gets up from the settee and pulls a stool from against the wall, positioning it directly in front of me so that we are face to face.

‘The simple fact is, Martin… that the economy is going to fall off a cliff and this was our best chance of winning an Election.’ ‘What do you mean?’ I ask him. I already knew that the American banks were in trouble, and there had been a run on Northern Rock. But no one, certainly no one in Government, had suggested that the UK economy was facing difficulties.

‘What I say – the economy is going to get a hell of a lot worse over the next two or three years and we’ll get the blame for it; so it was either go now and risk losing, or wait and know that we’re going to lose.’

We had no idea then how significant this statement was. It was only 11 months later, when Lehman Brothers bank collapsed, triggering the banking crisis in Britain, that it dawned on us: Ed had told us on our settee nearly a year before that it would happen.

When the then Chancellor Alistair Darling said a month before the Lehman collapse that the UK economy was about to crash, Brown and Balls and co disowned him. Yet, going by what Ed Miliband had told us, Balls knew that it was coming a year in advance, in October 2007.

Is it any wonder I ended up distrusting him?