Labour leadership contender sides with Euroscepticism
June 07 2010 by Niall J Rice
Ed Balls ramps up his leadership claims
Labour leadership contender questions the treaties of Lisbon amongst criticisms of former Prime minister
Ed Balls, the 43-year old former Financial Times economics editor, yesterday launched what has been labelled the most 'scaving' attack yet on Gordon Browns approach to UK immigration, while also questioning the UK’s role within the European Union.
Speaking openly and frankly to a Sunday broadsheet, the shadow schools secretary derided the ex-prime minister for being out of touch with voters on the subject of immigration and laid down a Euro-sceptic view on the migration of workers to the UK more in tuned with Tory policy than New Labour.
Speaking of the incident with Gillian Duffy, made famous by Mr Brown’s reference to her as ‘that woman’, he said;
“To be honest, I think Gordon's answer (to Mrs Duffy) showed he'd not been having the conversation, because what she said was the kind of things being said by Labour supporters, and in some cases former Labour supporters over the last year and a half.
This was: 'Look, we're not racist, and we support our EU membership and we know that immigration's important for the NHS, but look what it's doing to my community, to my child's job prospects, to our housing queues'.”
Mr Balls made the comments presiding a week when the nominations for the Labour leadership are closing and the new coalition government start to implement their idea’s on immigration into the UK - by capping the numbers of non-EU migrants but still allowing free movement by workers from within the European union community.
Questioning the sustainability of the current rules laid down by the Lisbon treaty and the treaties of Rome before that, Mr Balls called for an adjustment on the rules of free-movement of workers.
Famous for being an influential figure in helping block the UK from joining the Euro, Mr Balls sees the movement of trade and resources as equally beneficial, but feels that migration of the labour market from other countries further down the economical ladder to be disadvantageous.
In a move that is likely to score highly with the disaffected communities of which Gillian Duffy was referring to it seems that what the Tory government have forsaken with their coalition with the Lib Dems is being capitalised on by the former cabinet minister.
The idea of questioning a benchmark of the European union agreement, however, is radical and will not be able to be undertaken lightly - as any changes will have to be agreed upon by all 27 member states. Mr Balls cited the future joining of the EU by Turkey, who is currently negotiating membership as an example of how the rules will bear little benefit to the UK.
“Free movement of goods and services works to our mutual advantage. But the free movement (migration) of labour is another matter entirely.” he said.
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