Ed Balls should quit the Labour front bench to make his party more electable, according to an open letter to the shadow chancellor from the political biographer and historian Dr Anthony Seldon.
Seldon, who wrote biographies of former prime ministers Tony Blair and John Major, used the pages of the New Statesman magazine to urge Balls to "fall on his sword" and quit frontline politics for five years. The move would help Ed Miliband be a "much stronger leader", he said.
In his book Blair Unbound, Seldon suggested that Balls was one of the "more aggressive" plotters against Blair's premiership on behalf of Gordon Brown, a theme he returns to several times in the letter.
"Forgive me, but you stop Ed breathing fresh air," writes Seldon. "With you close to him, his breath will always be stale and smell of a toxic brand. Without a prolonged period out of the public eye, neither you nor the party will ever rid yourselves of the opportunistic, negative and bullying image of the Gordon era."
If Balls quit, Miliband could strengthen his front bench by bringing back his brother David, who was defeated in the leadership election in 2010, and would stand a better chance of forming a coalition with Liberal Democrats if there was no outright winner of the 2015 general election, claims Seldon, also headmaster of the exclusive Wellington College school.
Seldon also says that with Balls by Miliband's side, Labour cannot re-establish "credibility" on the economy or Europe, a reference to Balls' opposition to a referendum on Britain's EU membership.
The letter takes a personal, almost intimate tone.
"I know that you think you were a really very nice person all along, vulnerable with your own insecurities," writes Seldon. "Yet you need to redeem yourself and the atonement will never happen unless you disappear and return to public life with a fresh persona."
Balls' wife, shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper, would "be freer to think and act without you in her hair", he adds.
Balls is no stranger to controversy, but has always denied claims of bullying and off-the-record briefings against colleagues, describing such an approach as "the most second-rate way to do your politics" in an interview last year with the Huffington Post.
Supporters of Balls point out the importance of his policy stands, arguging he can be credited with giving the Bank of England independence in 1997, keeping the UK out of the euro on Labour's watch, and as children's and schools secretary late in the last Labour government fighting for better education funding and extending the 50p income tax.
In another section of the Huffington Post interview, Balls told the journalist he didn't give "a flying toss" about his reptuation. "There is something fabulous and noble and tragic about people whose reputations are finally rehabilitated and discovered 30, 40 or 50 years later," he added.
A Labour source said they were "relaxed" about the letter. "It's not the first time he [Seldon] has attacked Ed, and it probably won't be the last," said the source.
