The Mailonline has an interesting piece on Ed Balls.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1286627/Ed-Balls-forgets-Tory-Oxford-dressed-Nazi.html
Student days: Mr Balls at a university party in 1986, dressed in a Nazi.
Ed Balls was accused last night of airbrushing out his Tory past to try to salvage his campaign for the Labour leadership.
In an interview designed to shore up his support, Mr Balls, the standard bearer of the Labour left, declared his passion for the party was inspired by a hatred of Margaret Thatcher’s policies when he was at university.
‘I started studying [the economy] in 1983 when Thatcherism was at its peak – and I realised immediately that I wanted to show you could run an economy in a way which delivered social justice,’ said the former Schools Secretary.
‘All through my university days and my career I’ve been driven by the desire to prove that Labour could run the economy well.’
But it seems Mr Balls, an outside bet for the leadership behind David and Ed Miliband, is having difficulty with his memory.
While he was studying Politics, Philosophy and Economics at Keble College, Oxford, far from being utterly wedded to the Labour Party he was in fact a member of the university Conservative Association.
The secret Tory past of Mr Balls, who was Gordon Brown’s most trusted friend in the last government, had lain undetected for more than three decades.
It was revealed by Philip Hollobone, the Tory MP for Kettering, who was a member of the same Oxford Conservative Association between 1984-87.
‘I was the secretary of the Conservative association and I can tell you without a doubt that Ed Balls, who no one knew back then, was a paid-up member,’ said Mr Hollobone. ‘I imagine he is more than a little shy about talking about it.
Nick Clarke 