Sketch: Has Miliband skittled Balls?

You might only just recognise Ed Balls, and be just about comfortable enough with political ideology to know he’s Labour and they don’t like bankers, Tories or mansions, but maybe your political radar sort of weakens after that.

Well, congratulations, because you’ve just demonstrated enough inside knowledge to join the Ed Balls speech writing committee. Based on yesterday’s speech, your job should be rather easy simple. Most likely you’ll get Fridays off.

When at work, you and probably hundreds of other delegates will have the chance to rattle through the rather easily constructed comfort zone, with bad things about the Tories quickly making way for bad things about the cuts, and, of course, the bedroom tax.

But, novice speech writers aside, few political students will reread the 2014 shadow chancellor’s speech. Perhaps it was a chance to show how different he is to Gordon Brown, (heavy on detail, heavy on policy) but when Mr Balls spoke to the party conference yesterday, many were left feeling a little missold.

The blame is not entirely Mr Ball’s, the economy has to take its share of responsibility. When Mr Balls was lambasting the actual chancellor for cutting too far too fast without a plan B, the economy was recovering, leaving Mr Ball’s current speech writing team rather short of its own plan B.

Which is a shame, because Labour delegates are big fans of Mr Balls, and it’s normally easy to see why. Which leaves us with the awkward question, has Ed Miliband stolen Mr Ball’s best lines? We shall know more soon. Hopefully.