Golden Balls?

As the Labour nomination at Wakefield heads towards Ed Balls, consider that Gordon Brown in his autobiography stated matter-of-factly that his protégé did popular television as part of a strategy to make himself Prime Minister. Well, it worked for Boris Johnson.

But while Balls, like Johnson before him, is best known for a BBC programme, the fawning over the Labour Right is particularly pronounced on ITV, which is funded only by its giant corporate advertisers. Clearly, this is what they want. The same is true of LBC, with its guest presenter gigs for Wes Streeting, Rachel Reeves, David Lammy and Sadiq Kahn, and with its regular Call Keir feature.

Hence Alan Johnson on The Masked Singer, hence Piers Morgan's gushing "interview" with Keir Starmer, hence his handover of the gig to Derek Draper's wife, and hence his replacement in the morning with Alastair Campbell and, again, Ed Balls. Morgan has fallen a long way since his opposition to the Iraq War unleashed the torrent of personal abuse to which he has been subject ever since.