"Beg, Steal Or Borrow"?

Sounds like Maurice, all right. Especially the bit about how, "It just came to me suddenly."

But this is not evidence of any plot against Ed Balls. And replace him with whom, exactly? (Likewise, with David Miliband gone, there is no longer any Blairite alternative Leader.)

No, to an extent which can be positively frustrating at times, Maurice is not a plotter. That is just not his style. Why do you think that there are no Blue Labour candidates, as such, for parliamentary selection, or for the National Executive Committee?

Balls is an important voice both on the economy against the Worst Chancellor Ever, and, not unrelatedly, on the EU. But he and Yvette Cooper are still too wedded, so to speak, to the Blairite agenda against civil liberties. They do need to be kept in check.

Maurice is at least as good as anyone to do that. But don't tell him so, or he would stop doing it.