Letters: Balls has experience but lacks consistency

The elevation of Ed Balls to the post of shadow chancellor will not be seen as the peak of his ambition (your report, 21 January).

That would have come in the summer of 2009 when chancellor Alistair Darling outmanoeuvred Gordon Brown to hold on to his post in a botched cabinet reshuffle, denying the then prime minister's right-hand man control of the Treasury.

Notwithstanding all that, no opposition spokesperson for decades will hold more experience of economic policy- making than Mr Balls.

Apart from an impressive range of qualifications in the discipline, he has been a City minister as well as chief economic adviser to the Treasury. It's still important to look at whether his approach has been consistent.

He was the architect of the very tight fiscal and monetary rules which were at the heart of New Labour's programme for a decade.

Ironically, he is now strongly associated with the view that the coalition's cuts in public spending are too far and too fast. He is making the right noises about continuing the programme begun by Ed Miliband and Alan Johnson.

It will still be surprising though if he doesn't now try to use his expertise and influence to shift Labour round to his new way of thinking. Therein lies the danger, not just for Her Majesty's opposition but for Mr Balls himself. Chancellor George Osborne will be able to point out Mr Ball's lack of consistency.

Equally, it might be easy to expose his more combative temperament and irascibility in the heat of battle. For Labour this may not play well with the voters nationally.

For the new shadow chancellor there may be problems hanging on to his own seat which is held by a very slender majority.

Bob Taylor

Shiel Court

Glenrothes, Fife

While having the utmost sympathy for Alan Johnson's personal problem, we should not forget that it was he, as work and pensions secretary, who caved in to his former Post Office colleagues' demands, with Gordon Brown's support of course, and set back for years any chance of a sensible reform of the public sector retirement age and pension entitlement.

John Birkett

Horseleys Park

St Andrews

The new shadow foreign secretary, Douglas Alexander, may indeed have a sister in politics but that hardly constitutes "a Scottish Labour dynasty" (your report, 21 January).

Michael N Crosby

Muiravonside

By Linlithgow