Ed Balls wants to be Chancellor

Most politicians conceal their ambitions. Not so Ed Balls. Currently Labour’s Minister for Children, Schools and Families, he reveals in this week’s edition of the New Statesman that he would not only like to usurp Alastair Darling as Chancellor, but also, one day, replace his friend and mentor Gordon Brown as leader of the Labour Party.

“Would I like to be Chancellor at some point in the future? Of course I would. I'd love it," he said. However, Balls, 43, claimed that he did not, as was widely reported at the time, ask Gordon Brown for the Chancellor’s job when he became Prime Minister in 2007.

“I said at the time I'd never been in the cabinet, that I didn't think it was right for me to be Chancellor. That I wanted to go off and do a cabinet role of my own,” he said, before assuring Darling he was not out replace him anytime soon. "Alistair and I go back a long way and... I only have respect and 100 per cent support for him."

On rumours he would succeed Gordon Brown, he said: "I'm not going to say that I don't want to be leader of the Labour Party... But if I ended my political career not being [leader], would that be a failure? Absolutely not."
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