Ed Balls' trap for Andrew Rawnsley

Ed Balls said something that I thought was worth highlighting when he was on Andrew Marr's show this morning. He was discussing the bullying allegations against Brown and as part of his attempt to discredit Andrew Rawnsley (the author of the book containing the revelations) he pointed out that for two weeks running now, Rawnsley has published pieces defending his work. According to Balls, that is evidence that his book is full of holes.

It is indeed true that Rawnsley has published two op-ed pieces on consecutive weeks in The Observer that have sought to defend his work and reputation. the first one, last week was pre-emptive and the second one was responding to some of the criticisms this week.

But hang on minute. His pre-emptive piece was in order to try and neutralise some of the attacks that he knew would be coming his way from the formidable Labour spin machine (as indeed proved the case during the week) and the second piece was again responding to the smears from the same machine.

What was Rawnsley to do instead? Leave the field entirely open to Labour allowing them to besmirch and smear him and his reputation as much as they liked? He had every right to defend himself and his work. The fact that Balls is trying to use this as a way to smear him further is just silly.

It is an example though of the sort of Catch-22 traps that New Labour are very adept at laying. Just because they sound superficially reasonable though does not mean that they are.

It is time spin like this was fully exposed for the hollow nonsense it really is.