A worrying glimpse of the ‘real Ed’

THOUGH they are happy for us to see staged pictures of themselves as family men and women, politicians strive to keep their private sides very much to themselves.

Their close colleagues normally stay loyal, at least until it no longer matters. So the revelations of Martin Winter, once in Ed Miliband’s inner circle but now in the political outer darkness, are a rare glimpse of the Ed behind the image.

For any who had hoped that things could not possibly be as bad as they looked, the private Ed turns out to be remarkably like the public Ed.

His accident-prone and clumsy bumbling, his awkwardness with children and poorly chosen gifts are exactly what one might expect from a Hampstead intellectual suddenly confronted with the outside world.

Of course, we are all human, and there are worse failings. But Mr Winter’s central revelation is much worse. It is not just that Mr Miliband burned a hole in his host’s carpet. It is that he might burn a hole in the nation’s future.

Mr Winter discloses that the Labour Cabinet’s inner circles – including the party’s current leader – knew that an economic crash was coming a year before it arrived.

And he reveals that Ed Balls actually wanted a snap election to avoid being caught in that crisis.

This single devastating fact reignites David Cameron’s case – that Labour simply is not fit to be trusted with the economy, that its high command was irresponsible and incompetent in office and that the same people are still at the head of the party today.

Putting Ed Miliband in Downing Street would, quite simply, be taking an immense risk with the national economic future.