The Daily Telegraph - 26.08.2019

one fell swoop. “ ‘Economic adviser to

Gordon Brown’? I’m not sure I’d put

that on my CV if I was Ed Balls. It’s like

‘Personal trainer to Eric Pickles...’ ”

Not that an insult like that touched

the sides with these two. Reflecting

on their relationship, the pair are full

of backslapping jollity. The only time

they become deadly serious is when

they discuss their task as co-chairmen

of the advisory board: to make sure

the planned Holocaust memorial and

appended learning centre is delivered.

It hasn’t been entirely straightforward.

Despite support from all living

prime ministers, the leader of the

opposition, the Chief Rabbi and the

Archbishop of Canterbury, others

have objected, variously, to its location

(in Victoria Palace Gardens, next to

the Houses of Parliament), its design

(23 tall bronze fins, the spaces in

between representing the 22 countries

in which Jewish communities were

destroyed by the Holocaust) and

its necessity (pointing out there is

another memorial in Hyde Park).

The co-chairmen are confident

all issues have now been addressed,

ahead of a final vote by Westminster

city council next month. If passed,

they hope it’s built and open by 2022.

“We’re at a strange crossroads,

in that the last survivor will have

gone in the next decade. No one will

have smelt the smoke stacks, and the

Holocaust will be reassessed,” says

Pickles, who is also the UK special

envoy for post-Holocaust issues. He is

keen that through the learning centre,

which will also take in other genocides

of the 20th and 21st centuries, events

are evaluated honestly.

“Just about everybody can imagine

being the victims of the Nazis, but

few people can imagine being the

perpetrators, or collaborators with the

Nazis. The people who perpetrated the

Holocaust were not monsters. It would

be easy if they were, but they were

significantly emphatic renunciation

or active steps taken to deal with

this. There’s not enough action from

the leadership.” Balls believes the

memorial gives “the opportunity to

forge common ground and show our

identity and values”.

And when it’s built, what will

happen to their double act then?

“Well,” the older man says, “we’re

brothers by another mother, you

see. I cannot imagine anything other

than cordial relations.”

INTERVIEW

P

ickles and Balls. Balls

and Pickles. It sounds

like an antiquated picnic

item, but sitting before

me in a conference room

at the Home Office is, in

fact, Britain’s newest – and perhaps

unlikeliest – political bromance.

To my right is Eric Pickles,

formally styled Baron Pickles

of Brentwood and Ongar in the

County of Essex, who served a

quarter of a century as a Tory MP,

including spells as chairman of the

Conservative Party and secretary

of state for communities and local

government, before standing down

in 2017. He is wearing pink braces,

an outrageously lined suit and

leopard-print spectacles.

To my left is Ed Balls, formally

styled “Ed Balls from Strictly Come

Dancing”, who served a decade

as a Labour MP, including four

years as shadow chancellor, before

unceremoniously losing his seat four

years ago. He is wearing an enviable

holiday tan and has the buoyant air

of a man who still can’t quite believe

what salsa-ing to Gangnam Style on

television in 2016 did for his career.

(Later he will ask me if the fact he’s

only heard of three of this year’s

Strictly line-up means he’s getting

old. “No,” I tell him, “we’re all in the

same boat.”)

For 10 long years, Pickles and Balls

sat on opposite sides of the House

of Commons, exchanging verbal

grenades and mocking policies put

forward by one another’s party. They

barely exchanged a word, directly,

but early last year Theresa May was

appointing a new chairman for the

Holocaust Memorial Foundation

Advisory Board, and decided she

wanted to make a statement that

it was a project supported by all

parties. Pickles and Balls were on

the board. “I remember it well,” Balls

says. “I was in Alabama, preparing

for a wrestling bout for my BBC

series about the US, when I had a

conversation with Eric on the phone

for the first time. After that, I put a

leotard on...”

Pickles, 67, did not put a leotard

on. “It’s been a peculiar marriage,

one made in heaven really. We’ve not

had a single disagreement, and at a

very difficult time in politics, when

consensus has taken a back seat, it’s

refreshing to be able to ‘work across

the aisle’, as they say in America.”

It’s refreshing for everyone, given

there now appear to be two distinct

camps in Parliament: those who

would be willing to work “across

the aisle” and those who would like

the aisle to be as wide as possible.

The former includes many of Balls’s

Labour colleagues, including his wife

of 21 years, Yvette Cooper, who has

been mooted as a potential leader of

a “government of national unity” to

stop Brexit.

In the latter camp are a lot of

the newbies. Two years ago, Laura

Pidcock, then a new Labour MP,

declared she would never go for a

beer with a Conservative. And just

last week, Telegraph writer Charlotte

Gill complained that she, and others

like her, are actively ostracised in

the online dating world for being

Right-wing.

Balls clearly isn’t here to discuss

his wife’s career, but will say

this: “The only things that last in

society are the things that become

consensual. The minimum wage

was only a success because it had

cross-party support. So there’s

some big issues in our society

where achieving some consensus is

important. At a time when politics

is much more divided, consensus is

not a dirty word.”

That said, he’s still surprised at

the identity of his new “work wife”.

“If you’d said to me in 2015 that my

closest political relationship, the

person I’d spend the most time with

professionally, other than Yvette,

would be Lord Pickles... Well,

I wouldn’t have expected it.”

They have a shared taste for jazz

and English choral music, and have

experienced one another’s worlds:

Pickles took Balls to the Carlton Club;

Balls took Pickles to the Groucho.

Eyebrows were raised in both.

I wonder if the pair had to begin

with a round of apologies for their

decade of past jibes and jeers?

“I just remember mutual respect

and admiration. I can’t remember

saying anything nasty about you,”

Balls says, earnestly.

A pause, pricked perfectly by

Pickles’s straight face.

“OK, well you did.” They roar with

laughter. For the record, the worst

example I could find was Balls telling

reporters that Pickles fell asleep

during George Osborne’s budget

speech in 2014 – a claim Pickles

vehemently denied, despite footage

showing Vince Cable giving him a

sharp nudge in the ribs.

In fact, it was Osborne, during

a conference speech three years

earlier, who insulted them both in

Once opposing

MPs, how did they

come to pair up

behind the planned

Holocaust memorial,

asks Guy Kelly

Pickles and Balls: the unlikely double act

Political bromance:

Ed Balls and Eric

Pickles, right, are

joint chairmen of

the Holocaust

Memorial Society

ordinary people who did monstrous

things. Knowing that helps us to

understand what human nature is

capable of.” Pickles’s phone rings. It’s

Miles Davis. “Bit of Kind of Blue,” Balls

says, nodding appreciatively.

The location of the memorial is key.

Not only will it be highly visible in the

centre of London (where there are the

most police to keep it secure, too), but

it will also be dwarfed by Parliament.

“The visual symbolism is very

important,” Pickles says. “We want

to remind parliamentarians that they

have a choice: it can protect or oppress

its citizens.” In January 2015, when

David Cameron announced there was

to be a new UK Holocaust memorial,

Find out more about the UK Holocaust

Memorial and Learning Centre on

Twitter @UKHMF

PAUL GROVER FOR THE TELEGRAPH; CAMERA PRESS

‘It’s been a

peculiar

marriage,

one made

in heaven

really’

Political odd couples

Crossing the parliamentary divide

Jess Phillips &

Jacob Rees-Mogg

The outspoken

Labour MP for

Birmingham

Yardley seems

like the diametric

opposite of Jacob

Rees-Mogg, but

they’re friends.

Phillips has

even called the

Honourable

Member for the

18th century

“charming and

funny, kind,

mad and totally

himself ”.

Diane Abbott &

Jonathan Aitken

A pub quiz

question for

the ages: who

did the shadow

home secretary

choose as

godfather to her

son, James, in

1992? Why, later

disgraced Tory

cabinet minister

Jonathan Aitken,

of course. They

were voting

pairs at the time.

Sir Nicholas

Soames &

Frank Field

“I adore Frank,”

Sir Nicholas

Soames,

grandson of

Sir Winston

Churchill, once

said of the

firebrand Labour

backbencher. “I’m

never going to

join the Labour

Party. He’s never

going to join

the Tories. But

it doesn’t affect

the price of eggs.”

They have jointly

worked on issues

for decades.

nobody thought anti-Semitism would

rear its head so much in the years to

come. “It’s absolutely extraordinary.

I remember listening to the former

chief rabbi, who said that when it

moves to the fringes into a mainstream

political party, and when those who

seek to deal with it are shouted down,

then it becomes a real, substantive

problem,” Pickles says.

Balls is eager to stress that Jeremy

Corbyn and Labour are sincere

supporters of the memorial, but

hasn’t been impressed by the leader’s

response to what he calls “a major

problem in the party”. “It’s a matter

of shame for Labour that over the

years now that there hasn’t been a

The Daily Telegraph Monday 26 August 2019 *** 23

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