Ed Balls and Yvette Cooper

‘The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which'.

(‘Animal  Farm’ George Orwell)

The left liberal ‘Project’ is about ‘equality.’  The entire thrust of the ‘Project’ is about levelling the playing field, as       left-liberals see it. It is about creating a political and social  environment for the individual such  that the individual will not enjoy any social, political or economic  advantage  over anyone else because of his or her family, race, wealth, connections or in any other way. As we shall see though, nature will out - even when it comes to two of the most slavering, Stalinist equality merchants of them all,  Mr and Mrs Balls , aka Ed Balls and Yvette Coooper.

Education and New Labour Hypocrites

Given all New Labour’s emphasis on the need for equality and its attacks on ‘privilege’ it is hardly surprising if we find the attitude of New Labour ministers to the education of their own children nauseatingly hypocritical.  Tony Blair, who went to the Scottish Eton,  Fettes College, was only the most prominent of those who tried to have it both ways by sending his son to a state comprehensive school, but ensuring that it was a very unusual one: The Oratory in Fulham, London, a voluntary aided  Roman  Catholic institution run on  selective lines. There, young Euan had the benefit of what a 2006 Ofsted report described as a ‘distinctive ethos and vibrant environment’ in a school classed as ‘outstanding,’ the highest grade. The standards pupils achieve in public tests and examinations at all ages are excellent. The Oratory is also the school of choice of that Robespierre of equality, Harriet Harman, who herself went to the select  and very expensive St Paul’s School, London. And there are others. The black MP Diane Abbot, a mighty preacher of equality, sent her own son to the £10,000 a year City of London School, a move that she herself described as ‘indefensible.’ Ruth Kelly, one-time Education  Secretary took one of her children, said  to have learning difficulties, out of the state system to be enrolled in an elite £15,000-a-year private prep boarding school in the Home Counties. One wonders what Gordon Brown will do with his offspring. As a ‘Son of the Manse ‘ in Kirkaldy,  the largest town in Fife, he personally was born into the Scottish civic aristocracy and went to  the highly regarded  Kirkaldy High , then a Grammar School, from which he was propelled by a fast track system for bright children to Edinburgh University. He later claimed to hate this tremendous advantage without which he would quite likely not now be enjoying all the power he has over us.

‘Equality Ed’ Balls and Yvette Cooper – Persons of Principle ?

And so on. But surely Ed Balls, who is currently making such a big deal about where other politicians went to school (he himself went to  the fee-paying Nottingham High School) and Mrs Balls, or Yvette Cooper as she likes to call  herself in the interests of the equality of the sexes (who while attending comprehensives belongs to the Leftist aristocracy – her father was general secretary of the Union Prospect),  are persons of Principle? Balls, the current Secretary of State for Education, Schools and Families and Cooper, who is Chief Secretary to the Treasury are leaders in the Equality stakes. Though they could afford the very best education for their children, or  could, like Tony Blair or Harriet Harman and so many others (including David Cameron) have arranged  for them to attend one of the more  educationally and otherwise excellent State Schools still around and (one strongly suspects) more easily available to New Labour and other political grandees, chose instead  to send them to an East Hackney  school, Grazebrook  Primary.  Grazebrook has a high proportion of pupils speaking Turkish, Bengali and Gujarati as a first language. After a disastrous inspection by  Ofsted it was  described as ‘failing’ and put on special measures.

Selfishness and Self-Interest before Love and Care

What are we to make of such ‘principled’ parents who fail to give their children the very best education they can manage? Whilst at one level we might perhaps appreciate that they are putting their money where their mouth is, as the saying goes, isn’t there also, underneath that, an uncomfortable feeling  that these parents were hazarding the welfare of their children by sending them to such  a school when they could do so much more to give them every advantage in life?  Isn’t this refusal to do the very best for their offspring when it is well within their means, repulsive?  Doesn’t it militate against the very deepest of natural feelings: the love and care for  one’s own, one’s children, besides which all or most other considerations pale into insignificance for most normal people?

Doesn’t this attitude, especially on the part of such as Balls and Cooper reek of misplaced self-congratulation; of the miserable self- righteousness of the anointed; those in a state of Politically Correct Grace, which is all about themselves and not about their children and what is good for them? In short, a narcissistic desire  to feel good about themselves according to the perverted lights of their ideology which is in reality plain wicked since it  self-centredly and selfishly relegates the life chances of their children to the back-burner of their priorities, behind their own?

The Balls Duo - Subtle Hypocrisy and Cunning

But wait!!!  Perhaps Ed Balls and Yvette Cooper are not quite so repulsively self-righteous and selfish as they might seem!  Just slightly less so but deeply  hypocritical as well!! It is not, it turns out on closer inspection,  that they are not prepared to do what they  can for their children. They tried to do just that – but only up to the point that they could be accused of blatant hypocrisy, so that their reputation with the other equality fanatics in New Labour and thus their careers and amour propre might be injured.

Buying advantage

It is rumoured that they moved from their previous home in Lambeth because the schools in the Stoke Newington area of Hackney were thought at the time to be better. Of course, the Hackney school, whilst thought to be far superior to those in Lambeth (its Head received a national Teacher of the Year Award) was not considered to be in the same league as The Oratory School or similar schools, so the Balls whilst manoevering (as it seems highly likely, they thought at the time) to buy the best education they could for their children by purchasing  a property nearby, could not be condemned for Blair and Harman etc – style blatant hypocrisy.  There was a lot of calculation and slippery cunning at work with the whole repulsively hypocritical arrangement..

Carron Addams -Ofori

As noted above, though,  Grazebrook proved a disaster. Its Jamaican-born head, Carron Adams – Ofori, resigned.  Despite their best endeavours, the children of Mr and Mrs Balls became victims of the useless educational system that their parents have done so much to help foist on the rest of us. To see these appalling New Labour Stalinists becoming victims of their hypocrisy and their own stupid and vindictive policies in this way –  were it not for the unfortunate effects on the innocent Balls offspring, and even more so on the other children at this miserable school whose parents are not so well placed as are the Balls, one really would have to chortle in glee at seeing the Balls getting their just deserts and at  the irony of it all. 

‘Equality Ed’ Balls and  Yvette Cooper  –  Flipping Greedy as well as  Cunning and Hypocritical

But there is more in this tale of New Labour hypocrisy. How did Balls and Cooper move house to take  advantage of this supposedly superior school? We learn from the Daily Telegraph that Cooper ‘flipped’ homes no less than three times in two years.. After being elected to Parliament in 1997,  She designated a property in her constituency of Castleford, West Yorkshire as her second home, and began claiming mortgage interest payments on her Parliamentary allowances.

In May 2005. after  hubby Ed got himself elected as MP for Normanton, Cooper ‘flipped’ her second home to the family house she shared with  Balls and the children in South London. The mortage interest on this property was £1468, or £733 each compared to the £530 she had been paying for the Yorkshire property. The Balls then moved from South London to North London (ie closer to the  Hackney School) where the mortgage interest on their £655,000 property increased to £1,031 each. In total Balls and Cooper claimed more than £300,000 in allowances.

The point being made here  is that with Ed Balls and Yvette Cooper, we see what  is  in my view hypocrisy, finely calculated to avoid any such criticism while at the same time smuggling in privilege for the Balls offspring.

They  tried desperately to stay  just  within within the ambit of  New Labour’s  ordinary state  educational system so as not to be accused of blatant hypocrisy  and so run afoul of levelling marxist party members and a cynical public. But within these parameters,  they have tried, using their money and what some might well think of as an abuse of the Parliamentary expenses sytem, to buy education at what they thought was the unobtrusively best  school available, at the possible expense of the children of others who might otherwise have gone to this supposedly better school.

So my accusation is that ‘Equality Ed’ Balls and Yvette Cooper are guilty on two counts:-

First, in my view they offend against nature in that they have signally failed to do the very best that they could have done for their children as normal, loving parents would have, and

Second, in my view while they are not blatant hypocrites as they would be if they had conformed to the dictates of parental love and duty, such as did such as Blair and Harman, they are still hypocrites and of a peculiarly repellent  kind in that they tried to hide their hypocrisy in a slithering, covert sneaky way.  They tried to circumvent the standards they set for everyone else whilst appearing not to, probably confident that no one would notice that ‘some are more equal than others’. Moreover they made the most of the laxity of the Parliamentary expenses system to soak the taxpayer in order to do it.

This authoritarian pair of repulsive, greedy, selfish hypocrites are slippery, deceiving people, but not slippery enough.