Ed Balls pledges to ‘balance the books’ by 2020

Labour will balance the UK's books and deliver a budget surplus in the next Parliament if it wins the 2015 election, Ed Balls has said.

The shadow chancellor said Labour would pass a law to ensure it adheres to "tough" and binding fiscal rules.

This would mean eliminating the deficit - so the government generates more cash than it spends - and cutting debt as a share of GDP between 2015 and 2020.

While this all well and good and sounds promising, it’s very easy to say oh in seven years time we’ll balance the books, but it’s hard to take it seriously because that target is so far off and needs many things to happen before Balls has a chance of putting this into practice.

And let’s not forget he was part of the previous Labour government that did such a good job of balancing the books. . . . . 

I think politicians should be banned from spouting stuff like this in a non-election year because they can just say anything they like and not have to back it up, if Balls was saying this in the run up to the next election fine because it’d be scrutinised in close detail but saying it now with the election so far away nobody is thinking that far ahead, or cares.

Of course Balls and Labour aren’t alone the PM is one of the worst offenders of this on many issues he says this is an important issue and it should be addressed and we’ll do so in 2017 if we win the next election.

I always think when I hear that if it’s really as important as you seem to be stressing it is why not deal with it now and not in four or five years time if, and it’s a massive if, you win in 2015.

I think it would be much better if politicians focused more on the here and now and stopped making declarations and pledges of things they may or may not get the chance to do in five years time.