Ed Balls interview: 'I knew we had lost...I was here one day and gone the next' - Telegraph Labour Ed Balls interview: 'I knew we had lost...I was here one day and gone the next' Exclusive: The most shocking defeat of the 2015 election saw Labour’s economist-in-chief lose his seat. In his first major interview since that day, Ed Balls talks to Mary Riddell about disagreeing with the other Ed, his wife’s bid to be party leader, and mourning his career in politics 'There are people who like Parliament for its own sake. I'm not one of those' Photo: Will Sanders Follow On the day of the summer Budget , Ed Balls was sitting under a parasol on a Greek beach, reading a novel. For every other financial statement in recent British history, the former shadow chancellor had occupied a ringside position. This time, as George Osborne addressed the House of Commons, his erstwhile adversary was looking forward to a sailing lesson and a lunch of home-made moussaka. ‘It sounds a bit foolish, but I wanted to get away,’ Balls says. ‘I didn’t want to be around in Budget week .

My elder daughter, Ellie, had just finished her GCSEs, so I suggested that we went on a trip together.’ He wears his regret lightly, but his Budget boycott suggests that he is more bruised by defeat than he cares to show. Ed Balls with Gordon Brown in 2007 as Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families (GETTY) Balls’s 20-year career as one of the most influential figures in British politics came to an unheralded end at 7.30am on May 8, when he lost his Morley and Outwood seat by 422 votes in the greatest upset of the 2015 election. Balls had been aware for hours that Labour was facing a bleak outcome, but he had believed to the last that he might hold his seat. ‘We didn’t know the result until the returning officer read out the numbers. No one had known that it was that close.’ In the moment of defeat , he was sanguine. ‘I knew that I was part of a big turning point – the instant when democracy is at its rawest. I was the living embodiment of the rule that a politician can be here one day and gone the next.

I was very calm. I knew by then that we had lost the election.’ 'I don't miss being in the opposition; it's a thankless task' Ed Balls He must have known too that he would never attain his long-held dream of becoming Chancellor of the Exchequer. As Gordon Brown’s leading adviser, Balls had achieved more than many Chancellors by keeping Britain out of the euro and securing the independence of the Bank of England . Now, as he tried to assimilate his downfall, he turned to his victorious Conservative opponent, Andrea Jenkyns. ‘I told her to enjoy the moment and that she should always remember becoming a Member of Parliament for the first time. I was sad I had lost and devastated for Labour, but this was her moment , and I had to find a way to appreciate her victory. I couldn’t be po-faced or angry or grumpy.’ Afterwards, since neither he nor his wife, Yvette Cooper , could face the television crews outside their homes in London and in her constituency, they headed to his agent’s house. ‘Everyone there was stunned, upset and talking to me in such a mournful way that I said to him, “This is the oddest thing.

It’s like being at my own funeral when I’m still alive.” Balls conceding defeat to his Conservative opponent, Andrea Jenkyns, after this year's general election (REUTERS) My agent’s wife went into the kitchen and came back with a bottle of Harveys Bristol Cream, because sweet sherry is what you drink at funerals. Everybody had a small glass, and I thanked them all for what they had done.’ The wake over, Balls and Cooper went into hiding for a weekend at the home of friends, with their three children, aged 16, 13 and 10. ‘Yvette had to ask herself what she would do next. In 2010 I had told her that if she wanted to run for the leadership, I would stand aside.’ Cooper declined. In what became known as the ‘Costa Coffee agreement’, so called because the couple discussed their futures over motorway espressos, Balls decided he would run instead. ‘This time round, I was out of politics. Yvette was still in. The reason we’ve been in it for all these years is that we thought we were there for a purpose.

That’s why she’s running .’ Honesty is the best policy We meet at Balls’s new base, a Dickensian attic room high above Covent Garden in London. In Parliament he had two capacious offices; now he has two desks squashed into a tiny space. A bin overflows with takeaway carrier bags, and almost the only personal touch is his ‘Golden Rule’ – the long brass ruler presented to him by Treasury colleagues to mark his reign as Gordon Brown’s chief economic adviser . Arch-strategist that he was and is, Balls is a curiously honest politician. He does not seek to mask the pain of losing; nor – though critics brand him as truculent – does he disguise the vulnerability that is a part of any leading political player. While he is friendly and self-deprecating, he is here to close a long chapter in his life, and does so meticulously. Before we meet he has jotted down notes, lest he forget anything. Ed Balls, far right, with Gordon Brown, centre, on Budget day in 2007 (GETTY) As a parliamentarian, Balls attracted great loyalty from his staff, and it has grieved him to disband his team.

Almost three months after the election, he has turned down all offers of work except for a fellowship at Harvard, his old university, where he will spend a week per month. He will also take on a role at London School of Economics as he decides what to do with the rest of his life. Though rumours he would appear on Strictly Come Dancing were untrue, he received another invitation. ‘There was great excitement in our house, or horror, when an offer came in from I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here!.’ Was he tempted? ‘No. I wrote back to say that I’d already subjected myself to one high-profile public vote this year, and I wasn’t really sure that I wanted a second one. At least having to eat bugs and crickets wasn’t part of the election process. I’m not tough enough for that.’ Even without Bushtucker Trials, Balls found it hard to adapt to life outside politics. ‘It was such a big change. We were really tired, and our daughter’s first GCSE was on the Friday morning after the general election, so it was a very difficult time for everyone.

Other than going to the play-off matches to see Norwich [City FC] promoted, I didn’t do much for the first two weeks. ‘I had many hundreds of emails, from as many Conservative as Labour supporters.’ One of the first to get in touch was Osborne , with whom Balls would sometimes share a late-night drink at a financial summit. ‘He sent me a very nice text.’ Did David Cameron, who once called Balls ‘the most annoying person in modern politics’, do likewise? ‘No.’ Balls with Yvette Cooper at their wedding in Eastbourne, 1998 (REX FEATURES) Others, from Tony Blair to the governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney , were more generous, and Balls clung to their condolences as a lifeline. ‘The constituency office posted one batch of letters that got lost. They couldn't remember who the senders were, apart from the Archbishop of Canterbury and the American ambassador. And they were gone. It was very strange. For about two weeks it was as if a part of me had been taken away.’ Balls makes no secret of the fact that he transferred his feelings of professional bereavement on to a mislaid package of eulogies from friends and strangers.

‘All these letters and emails were so personal – just recollections of things I’d done. Eventually they turned up – the office had paid insufficient postage and they were stuck at a Post Office – but for that fortnight the sense of loss in not being able to read them was really, really bad.’ The irony of Balls’s departure is that he was mourned not only by admirers but also by those who had feared or disliked him. Jim Murphy , the defeated Scottish Labour leader and arch-Blairite, used his valedictory speech to heap praise on Balls, pointing out that Balls might have saved his own seat had he not invested so much time trying to help Murphy and secure a Labour victory. Musical chairs As he trekked from one marginal seat to the next, Balls – once a schoolboy violinist – wrenched his back playing drums with Feargal Sharkey, the former Undertones singer, at a fundraiser. ‘I’m the first politician in an election campaign to be hampered by a drumming injury.

I also slightly strained the tendons in my left arm, so I had to stop playing the piano.’ Balls had set great store by his piano-playing , which he took up when he became shadow chancellor, progressing to performing on Radio 2. After the election, with free time at his disposal, he was unable to play. ‘I realised that for me music was totally associated with the job. I used to practise when I got home from Parliament, and I couldn’t do it. I had a piano block for seven weeks after losing the election. I started off thinking that I’d hurt my wrist, but the problem was the association with the past. I’m back on track, but my Grade 5 exam may have to wait until next year.’ Balls in Birmingham at Labour's Spring Event in March this year, alongside Chuka Umunna and Harriet Harman (GETTY) For all his bullish reputation, Balls once confessed to weeping at Antiques Roadshow . Was he reduced to tears by his defeat? ‘I spent a lot of time comforting people who were terribly upset. I never broke down for my loss.

But our children were upset for me, and the emotion was for other people’s generosity.’ Balls’s personal defeat may have been softened by the lack of any future for him in a vanquished party. ‘I’d already done five years in opposition, so another five years would have been tough.’ Though he does not say so, those last five years were more difficult than onlookers guessed. Back in 2010 Balls realised he might already have reached the pinnacle of his parliamentary career. ‘When I didn’t become leader or shadow chancellor [Ed Miliband chose Alan Johnson ], I already felt that I had done big things in politics and that it was really important to appreciate that. 'There were disagreements. It was no secret that I thought from the very beginning that Ed needed to position himself better with business' Ed Balls ‘So I wasn’t thinking that being denied the next big thing was a disaster. I had to go through the whole leadership election knowing that I wasn’t going to win because I carried too much of Gordon around.’ Others may claim that he was too obdurate, too unwilling to admit errors, and ultimately unpersuasive to voters.

Be that as it may, Balls used all the tact and loyalty at his disposal to mask his difficult relationship with the party leader. While he has never publicly criticised Miliband, he admits now that he had serious doubts about accepting the role of shadow chancellor when Johnson stood down. ‘I was pretty frustrated not to be shadow chancellor in 2010… When [Ed Miliband] asked me to do it in 2011, I said to him, “Are you sure you want me to do it? Because if you are sure, then I will.” Balls with Ed Miliband in April 2013 (GETTY) I didn’t want him to equivocate. He had to decide. He said he did want me, and I did [the job] to the best of my ability all the way to election day. I tried – and we tried – really, really hard.’ So eager was Balls to make the relationship work that he sought advice from his hero, Denis Healey , now 97, a legendary former Labour Chancellor. ‘I wanted to talk to him… particularly about the tension between him and Tony Benn [Healey’s adversary on the Left].

‘Denis’s wife, Edna, had died recently, and he told me that the first person to call him was Tony Benn , whose own wife had died some time before. He had become a supporter, a friend and a comrade. That was bigger in Denis Healey’s mind than any old divisions. I decided that anything that puts us [Balls and Miliband] on the same side has to be bigger than anything that divides us. That is how I tried to do the job for four years.’ 'It's a new chapter for me, and there will be something for me outside politics' Ed Balls But Balls, I suggest, had to work with a leader who did not always even consult him. ‘There were disagreements. It was no secret that I thought from the very beginning that Ed needed to position himself better with business… I said to him very early on that we should come out for the new runway at Heathrow because it would be a very good signal of long-termism. I’d rather Labour had made that move three years earlier. Ed didn’t want that.’ Nor did Balls’s objections to the energy-price freeze prevail. ‘Ed and his team wanted it, and I supported it [publicly] and tried to explain it.

What I didn’t like was the language giving the impression that energy companies are the bad guys. If you allow yourself to be anti-business, or anti-bank or anti-energy company, people think, “Hang on a second, you have to work with these people if you want to govern.”’ Such arguments fell on deaf ears. ‘Ed had a core campaign team close to him, and I wasn’t part of that. But I felt he supported me. People didn’t want Ed as Prime Minister, and they didn’t want a Labour government. That includes me. I’m not going to start making excuses or shifting responsibility.’ As Balls told the BBC soon after his defeat, he had failed to persuade people that he could be Chancellor, and he had to ‘take that on the chin’. ‘I accept my share of blame. If there were times when I was frustrated along the way, well, that’s life,’ he says. Has he spoken to Miliband since the election? ‘Sure. He rang me after my result and before his resignation speech and told me what he was going to do.’ Balls to it Ed Balls thinks it ‘unlikely’ that he will ever return to frontline politics.

‘Gordon rang me and said, “You’ve got to get back into politics quick.” I said, “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” I’m not going to the House of Lords , and I’m not planning to go back to the Commons. It’s a new chapter for me, and there will be something for me outside politics. ‘I really wanted to be Chancellor of the Exchequer. I don’t miss being in opposition; it’s a thankless task – not fun. There are people who like Parliament for its own sake . I’m not one of those.’ 'If you're going to have a midlife crisis, you should manage it well' (WILL SANDERS) Always a devoted father, he is spending more time with his children and continuing to do the family cooking while his ‘brilliant’ wife fights her campaign. ‘It’s for the Labour party to decide ,’ he says. ‘But I have a vote, and I will vote for Yvette.’ Balls, who scrupulously plays no part in her campaign, has taken up golf and will doubtless run more marathons to raise money for the stammering charities that he, a lifelong stammerer , supports.

‘If you’re going to have a midlife crisis, you should manage it well,’ he says. This summer the Balls/Cooper clan will tour the West Coast of America in a camper van in a repeat of the holiday they took when Balls was running for the leadership. After that, he will ponder his long-term future. At the 2007 Labour Party conference (GETTY) Will history vindicate Balls? In typically ebullient fashion, he thinks that process may already be in train. As evidence, he cites the Tory Budget , much of which he endorses. ‘There are some things I don’t like. But George Osborne is smoothing the spending cuts and slowing the pace of deficit reduction, which is exactly what I said we should do.’ As the Chancellor announced those intentions, Balls was reclining on his Greek sunlounger, thinking back to an incident from the previous day. He and his daughter had been sailing in separate dinghies when Balls, a qualified sailor, found himself in difficulty. ‘The wind got up, the boat capsized, and I had to swim round, re-clip an open clip, refloat my boat and sail home. ‘I managed to do so without any help.

My daughter thought that was sufficient evidence that I could always sort out a problem and get back safely.’ Balls, the most prominent casualty of Labour’s shipwreck, will be seeking in the coming months and years to prove her right. A brief history of Ed Balls 1967 Ed Balls is born into a Labour-supporting family in Norwich, before moving to Nottingham at the age of eight. 1983 He signs up for the Labour party aged 16, partly so he can vote for his father who was a chairman for the local party. 1990 BBC News - Ed Miliband's shadow cabinet and ministerial teams Ed Miliband's shadow cabinet and ministerial teams Click on the faces for profiles Here are details of Ed Miliband's ministerial team following his October 2013 reshuffle. This page is no longer being updated. For latest, click here . ED MILIBAND - LABOUR LEADER The then 40-year-old beat older brother and former foreign secretary David to the Labour leadership in 2010 by the narrowest of margins, with the backing of the trade unions proving decisive.

Attempted to shake-off his "Red Ed" tag by talking about the "squeezed middle" - but faced criticism the party lacked direction. He launched a two-year policy review and consultation exercise on "refounding" Labour as a more modern and inclusive party. He faced criticism his leadership lacked edge, but won support over his reaction to the phone-hacking scandal - and his decision to burn the party's bridges with Rupert Murdoch's media empire. The son of a Marxist intellectual and an MP since 2005, he was formerly an adviser to Gordon Brown. After entering Parliament, he enjoyed a rapid rise, becoming energy and climate change secretary in 2008. Married his long-term partner and mother of his two young children, Justine Thornton in 2011. ED BALLS - SHADOW CHANCELLOR As Gordon Brown's chief economic adviser, he was at the chancellor's side for many years. After being elected an MP in 2005, he quickly became a Treasury minister but had to deny accusations of briefing against Tony Blair. Later he became schools secretary and narrowly held on to his seat in the 2010 election after being targeted by the Tories.

Came third in the Labour leadership contest and was named shadow home secretary, despite being tipped for shadow chancellor. His public calls for Labour to change its position on the deficit were widely seen as having lost him the job. However, following Alan Johnson's resignation in January 2011, Mr Balls, at the age of 44 , became shadow chancellor after all. Married to shadow cabinet colleague Yvette Cooper. YVETTE COOPER - SHADOW HOME SECRETARY AND MINISTER FOR WOMEN AND EQUALITIES Popular throughout the party, the then 42-year old got the most votes of any MP in the shadow cabinet elections. A former journalist with the Independent, she was marked out early on as a rising star after being elected in 1997. Two years later, at the age of 30, she became a minister - the youngest at the time. She rose quickly up the ministerial ladder, working in the Treasury before becoming work and pensions secretary. Was urged by some to run for the leadership but decided against it, saying it was not the right time.

Another of those seen as a potential shadow chancellor, she was in fact appointed shadow foreign secretary in Ed Miliband's first front bench line-up, but moved to the home affairs brief after Alan Johnson's resignation. Married to Ed Balls - they are the first married couple to serve as cabinet ministers at the same time. They have three children. DOUGLAS ALEXANDER - SHADOW FOREIGN SECRETARY The former solicitor is one of only a handful of senior Labour figures who were close to both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. Once Gordon Brown's speechwriter, he served as Scottish secretary and transport secretary under Tony Blair and international development secretary under Gordon Brown. Blamed by some for the election that never was in 2007 after urging Gordon Brown to call a snap poll. Aged 43 , he co-ordinated the 2010 Labour general election campaign. Backed David Miliband in the leadership contest, chairing his campaign. TRISTRAM HUNT - SHADOW EDUCATION SECRETARY Historian Tristram Hunt, MP for Stoke-on-Trent Central since 2010, was promoted from shadow minister to shadow education secretary in the October 2013 reshuffle. He replaced Stephen Twigg.

Mr Hunt is best known as a regular newspaper columnist, broadcaster and history lecturer. After taking a first-class degree in history from Cambridge University, he served as an exchange fellow at the University of Chicago before returning to Cambridge to complete his doctorate. He went on to work for Tony Blair in the Labour Party HQ on the 1997 General Election campaign and became a special adviser to former Science Minister Lord Sainsbury. ANDY BURNHAM - SHADOW HEALTH SECRETARY Turning 40 in 2010, Burnham was the youngest candidate in the Labour leadership contest, in which he came fourth. During the campaign, he argued that Labour had lost touch with its grass roots supporters and been dazzled by wealth. Like many senior figures in the party, he is a former special adviser. He rose quickly through the ranks after becoming an MP, serving as chief secretary to the Treasury, culture secretary and health secretary. He is a keen football player and avid Everton fan. Looked after education in Ed Miliband's first shadow cabinet before returning to his previous love, health in 2011.

HARRIET HARMAN - DEPUTY LEADER AND SHADOW CULTURE SECRETARY Labour's deputy leader, she took over from Gordon Brown as acting leader in May 2010, capping a remarkable political comeback after she was sacked from Tony Blair's first cabinet in 1998 in a row over welfare reform. She worked her way back into favour and held a number of ministerial positions, including solicitor general, before beating Alan Johnson to the deputy leadership in 2007, at the age of 56 . A longstanding campaigner for women's rights, she led a drive while in government to have domestic violence taken more seriously. Widely commended for her Commons performances as acting leader. Swapped briefs with Ivan Lewis in October 2011, having previously spoken on international development. RACHEL REEVES - SHADOW WORK AND PENSIONS SECRETARY Shortly after returning from maternity leave she was promoted in October 2013 from the post of shadow treasury secretary having been shadow pensions minister in Ed Miliband's first shadow cabinet. The MP for Leeds West was first elected to Parliament at the age of 31 in 2010.

A former Bank of England economist, Ms Reeves quickly became a strong voice in opposition and penned an entry in the Purple Book - produced by Lord Mandelson's Progress group - warning that Labour should address the UK's poor rates of saving with targeted tax relief. Oxford and LSE-educated, she also worked at the British Embassy in Washington and at Halifax Bank of Scotland before entering Parliament. CHUKA UMUNNA - SHADOW BUSINESS SECRETARY A former employment lawyer turned MP for the London constituency of Streatham, Mr Umunna has seen his stock rise inexorably since he was elected in 2010. A former PPS to Ed Miliband, he's already been a shadow business minister and also sat on the powerful Treasury select committee. He has attacked the coalition government for not doing enough to foster bank lending through its Project Merlin agreement. Just 31 when elected, he is already been talked of as a potential future leader. HILARY BENN - SHADOW COMMUNITIES AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT SECRETARY As the son of former Labour Cabinet minister Tony Benn, the MP for Leeds Central is part of a political dynasty.

Regarded as more pragmatic than his father, he was a union official and special adviser to then education and employment minister David Blunkett before becoming an MP in 1999. Well-regarded as international development and environment secretary under Gordon Brown despite having a generally low profile. At the age of 53 stood for the deputy leadership in 2007, coming fourth. One of Ed Miliband's primary supporters in the leadership contest. SADIQ KHAN - SHADOW JUSTICE SECRETARY One of the most high profile Muslim MPs, the then 40-year-old was an early backer of Ed Miliband to be Labour leader and went on to run his campaign. Before becoming an MP in 2005 he was a leading human rights solicitor and chairman of pressure group Liberty. He is a former government whip, local government minister and transport minister, who was promoted to shadow transport secretary when Lord Adonis stood down after the 2010 general election. Since taking on the justice brief, he has admitted Labour did not do enough to tackle reoffending but accused the coalition of focusing on cutting costs not crime. Leading light in Labour think tanks The Fabian Society and Progress.

VERNON COAKER - SHADOW DEFENCE SECRETARY Moving to defence from shadow Northern Ireland secretary in October 2013, the MP for Gedling held several ministerial positions in the last Labour government. One of those jobs was to look after policing - something he continued in Ed Miliband's first shadow cabinet. He was also minister for drugs and crime reduction under Tony Blair and sparked controversy, given that role, when he admitted having smoked cannabis as a student. Mr Coaker first entered Parliament in 1997, aged 43, having failed to win seats in both 1992 and 1987. Married with two children, he's also a former government whip. CAROLINE FLINT - SHADOW ENERGY AND CLIMATE CHANGE SECRETARY The then 47-year old caused a stir in 2009 when she quit the government and accused Gordon Brown of regarding her and other senior women in the Cabinet as "window dressing". Like many leading female MPs, the former union worker entered Parliament in the 1997 Labour landslide. Responsible for the controversial eco-town project as housing minister before becoming Europe minister in 2008. Supported David Miliband in the leadership contest.

A beneficiary of Ed Miliband's first reshuffle, she moved from the communities and local government brief in October 2011. ANGELA EAGLE - SHADOW LEADER OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS One of twin sisters in the shadow cabinet, the MP for Wallasey in Merseyside joined the Labour party when she was 17. The former union official was present on the Labour frontbench throughout the Blair and Brown years, without ever making the Cabinet. Her middle-ranking roles included social security minister and pensions minister. One of Labour's first openly gay MPs, she formed a civil partnership with her long-term partner in 2008. She supported David Miliband in the leadership contest. In Ed Miliband's 2011 reshuffle, at the age of 50 , she was shifted to shadow leader of the Commons from shadow chief secretary to the Treasury. CHRIS LESLIE - SHADOW CHIEF SECRETARY TO THE TREASURY Chris Leslie has been appointed shadow chief secretary to the Treasury in the latest Labour frontbench reshuffle. The former Bradford councillor was elected MP for Shipley - a Tory stronghold in Yorkshire - in 1997.

He held several junior positions in the former Labour government within the Cabinet Office, the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister and the Department for Constitutional Affairs. He lost his Shipley seat in 2005, but re-entered Parliament in 2010 as MP for Nottingham East. He went on to serve as shadow financial secretary to the Treasury on Labour's front bench in the Commons. MARY CREAGH - SHADOW TRANSPORT SECRETARY Mary Creagh has moved from shadow environment secretary to shadow transport secretary in October 2013. When she was appointed to Ed Miliband's first shadow cabinet in October 2010, the then 42-year old had never held a frontbench role before. The Wakefield MP worked for the European Parliament and in academia before entering Parliament in 2005. A keen Europhile, she is fluent in French and Italian. Worked as parliamentary private secretary to Andy Burnham but voted for David Miliband in the leadership contest. MARIA EAGLE - SHADOW ENVIRONMENT SECRETARY Maria Eagle moved in October 2013 to shadow environment secretary in a job swap with Mary Creagh.

She is the sister of Angela but chose to support Ed Miliband in the leadership contest. Ms Eagle was a solicitor in Liverpool before entering Parliament in 1997. She held a series of ministerial positions under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, including children's minister and equalities minister. Like her twin, she lists cricket as one of her interests and is a proficient chess player. JIM MURPHY - SHADOW INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT SECRETARY Jim Murphy was moved - demoted in many people's eyes - in October 2013 from shadow defence secretary. He is a Blairite who worked on David Miliband's leadership campaign. He has held a string of government jobs since entering Parliament in 1997, after snatching the Conservative Party's safest seat in Scotland. He served Labour in power as a whip, Cabinet Office minister, welfare minister, Europe minister and, finally, at the age of 41 , Scottish secretary. The East Renfrewshire MP is a former president of the National Union of Students, who lists his hobbies as model trains and playing football.

MARGARET CURRAN - SHADOW SCOTTISH SECRETARY Previously an MSP, Ms Curran represented Glasgow Bailliestone since the Scottish Parliament's inception in 1999. But when that constituency was torn up in boundary changes she made the move to Westminster in 2010. Under her, Labour took back Glasgow East having lost it in a by-election defeat by the SNP in 2008. In Holyrood, she held various posts, including minister for communities, overseeing the executive's flagship anti-social behaviour laws. Before entering politics she was a lecturer in community education. The then 52-year-old took up her first full shadow cabinet role in October 2011. JON TRICKETT - DEPUTY LABOUR PARTY CHAIR Jon Trickett takes over from the departing Tom Watson as deputy Labour party chair. Gordon Brown's former parliamentary aide, Mr Trickett previously attended shadow cabinet as a junior minister and became a full member as shadow Cabinet Office minister in Ed Miliband's 2011 reshuffle. The then 61-year-old MP for Hemsworth took over the role from Tessa Jowell.

MICHAEL DUGHER - SHADOW CABINET OFFICE MINISTER Michael Dugher became shadow Cabinet Office minister in October 2013 after attending the shadow cabinet as shadow minister without portfolio. Mr Dugher won the seat of Barnsley East at the 2010 General Election, after serving as chief political spokesman for the then Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Having joined the ranks of the Labour parliamentary party, he then became a parliamentary private secretary to the Leader of the Opposition, Ed Miliband. He is also currently vice-chairman of the Labour Party. GLORIA DE PIERO - WOMEN AND EQUALITIES MINISTER Gloria De Piero was appointed shadow women and equalities minister in the October 2013 reshuffle. The former GMTV political editor was an political admirer of Tony Blair and backed David Miliband as party leader. She was elected as MP for Ashfield at the 2010 General Election and appointed to a junior role in the shadow Department for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport. Since October 2011, Ms De Piero has served as a junior shadow Home Office minister.

OWEN SMITH - SHADOW WELSH SECRETARY Former BBC radio producer and special adviser who has risen quickly through the ranks. The then 40-year-old was elected in 2010 for Pontypridd, but previously stood unsuccessfully in the 2006 Blaenau Gwent by-election where he lost to independent Dai Davies. He supported Ed Miliband for the leadership and was given a role in his shadow team five months after entering the House, first as shadow Wales minister and then in the shadow Treasury team. This is his first shadow cabinet role. IVAN LEWIS - SHADOW NORTHERN IRELAND SECRETARY Moving from shadow minister for international development in October 2013, former charity worker and chief executive of the Manchester Jewish Federation, Mr Lewis held a string of junior ministerial posts in the Labour government after becoming an MP in 1997 at the age of 31. He started out as a parliamentary private secretary to then Trade Secretary Stephen Byers, before going on to be an education minister, Treasury minister, health minister and international development minister. Most recently, he was minister of state at the Foreign Office.

His previous shadow cabinet role was as culture spokesman in which he was a vocal campaigner on phone hacking. ROSIE WINTERTON - CHIEF WHIP The then 52-year-old was elected unopposed in a ballot for chief whip in 2010. A former local government minister, the Doncaster Central MP is responsible for maintaining discipline among Labour MPs in crucial Commons votes. BARONESS ROYALL - SHADOW LEADER OF THE LORDS Continues to lead her party in the Lords, having done the job, while in government, under Gordon Brown. She is also a spokesman on education, work and pensions, Northern Ireland and equality issues. Born in 1955 , she started her political career as a special adviser to Neil - now Lord - Kinnock in the 1980s. LORD BASSAM - LABOUR CHIEF WHIP IN THE HOUSE OF LORDS A long-serving leader of Brighton and Hove Council, Lord Bassam was given a peerage in 1997 at the age of 44. The former local government official has continued as Labour's chief whip in the Lords, having done the job since before the 2010 general election.

More on This Story Alan Johnson: 'There's no point regretting things you said as a joke' | The Independent Profiles Alan Johnson: 'There's no point regretting things you said as a joke' The Monday Interview: Did Alan Johnson really need a primer on economics when he was made Shadow Chancellor? The 'best leader Labour never had' reveals the truth to Christina Patterson Monday 27 December 2010 00:00 BST Click to follow Alan Johnson: 'There's no point regretting things you said as a joke' 1/2 2/2 TERI PENGELLY It's quite hard, at a time when most politicians appear to have popped out of the womb yelling for a Hansard, and spent their toddlerhood nationalising each other's train sets, and their teenage years ditching the charts for the Top 10 political biographies, and their Top 10 tips for power, to imagine a prime minister who was once a postman.

It's quite hard to imagine a prime minister who was, from the age of 12, brought up by his 15-year-old sister in a council flat, and who left school at 15, and stacked shelves at Tesco, and married at 17, and became a postman at 18, because at 18 he already had two children to feed, and who also cut a single in a rock band. It's quite hard, but it shouldn't be, because Alan Johnson has been widely talked of as the best leader that Labour never had. When James Purnell resigned, in June of last year, and when Geoff Hoon and Patricia Hewitt launched their cack-handed coup in January of this one, in the hope of ousting a Prime Minister who seemed as easy to dislodge as one of the rock faces in the Grand Canyon, Alan Johnson was regarded by many as Brown's biggest threat. Johnson, it was thought, had all the charm, and ease in his own skin, and spontaneity, and warmth, and empathy with working-class widows in Rochdale, that his poor, tormented and publically robotic, boss lacked.

But Johnson wouldn't, as football-loving political pundits like to say, play ball. He was loyal to Blair. He was loyal to Brown. He is loyal (but we'll get to that later) to Ed. Brown stayed, and then went, and then we had the Mili-saga, which appeared to go on for millennia, and now Johnson holds what would, if Labour were in power, and not in what appears to be hibernation, be the second highest office in the land. His actual office is jolly nice. It is, on a December day when the entire infrastructure of the country has collapsed because of snow (a subject on which he is feistily vocal on telly the next day, in a way that almost has you thinking that 13 years of carefully stockpiled salt has just been flushed down a vast Tory toilet), toasty and homely, with a couple of comfy beige sofas in a little cluster between a boardroom table and a vast desk. One side of the room is lined with bookcases. On a shelf near one of the windows, there are model aircraft and wooden elephants.

On the wall, there's a Queen's Park Rangers mirror, a framed programme from the Queen's Park Rangers v Spurs Cup Final in 1982, and a cartoon of Johnson playing a bass guitar. From one of the two big windows, you can look out over Whitehall. From the other, you see the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben. It is, I can't help thinking, a great place to gaze, and muse, on the structures of power. And on the beige sofa opposite me is a man so magnetic that I find myself getting quite flustered. There's a little panic when I search for my tape recorder, tell his aide that I definitely had it in reception, find it sandwiched between the pages of my notebook and then hear myself telling the shadow Chancellor about how, when I interviewed Robert Harris, I managed to delete half the tape, confessed to him at his launch party, and then had my handbag nicked and lost the lot. It is, it strikes me later, a bit like the "economics primer" that Johnson claimed, on being made shadow Chancellor, that he'd need to nip out and buy. I'm not a proper journalist, and you're not a proper politician.

We've got so much in common! Johnson looks bemused, and amused. In his natty suit, and smart blue tie, he has the poise and elegance of a cat. In photos, he looks like a nicely coiffed 60-year-old man. In the flesh, he looks – well, you don't really think about how he looks. You notice that his eyes really do sparkle and they really are very blue. You notice that his skin is a healthy, but not Cameroonian, pink. You notice that he is listening very intently, and nodding, and smiling, and waving his hands for emphasis, and that you are obviously being rather fascinating, and rather witty, or perhaps he is being rather polite. He said, I tell him, and it feels like a pronouncement from an era now buried under layers of history, that Gordon Brown was the "best man for the job". But he didn't, unfortunately, do it that well. Couldn't he have done better? Johnson leans back and smiles. "No," he says, and the vowel itself feels like a cat stretched out on a sofa, a refreshing counterbalance to clipped Etonion ones, and Mili-mockney glottal stops.

"I could have done some things better, because some of the way Gordon dealt with the media etcetera – well, it would be hard to do it worse. But that's the very superficial side. We were in the middle of this economic tsunami. Gordon was the first person to say it's not just about the liquidity, it's about capital adequacy. He genuinely did lead the G20 to that resolution in Pittsburgh and then in London, and it was awe-inspiring. It was Gordon who did more than anybody else to lead us out of it and to get us into a situation where we were back in growth." I feel a little glow of pride, as if I was Gordon Brown's mother, and not just someone who once met him, and I also think how nice it is, when no one appears to have a good word for him, and the Prime Minister uses his name as an insult at the despatch box, that someone is speaking in his defence. But surely, I say, Brown could have done what he did as Chancellor, and what he has dismissed as "the very superficial side" of politics isn't superficial at all; it's what Cameron is doing brilliantly, and the nation is lapping up?

Johnson nods, and I'm thrilled. "I do accept your point," he says. "Unusually for a politician, Gordon didn't get any buzz at all out of the 'smell of the grease-paint, roar of the crowd' aspect of politics. It made it difficult for him. I've said before, I think this Government's advantage is Cameron looking the part. Looking the part is quite important." But it's not just looking the part, is it? Before the election, I remind him, he said that both Cameron and Osborne were "lightweights". They don't seem quite such lightweights now. They have, in fact, in certain ways, been rather impressive. Haven't they? Johnson unleashes a great peal of laughter. "Hang on!" he says. "Osborne doesn't impress me to the extent that Cameron looks the part. I don't think Osborne does. There's looking the part, and – perhaps this is your point. I could have looked the part, but not been able to do the job as effectively. Now, what you'll find is that they've had the rose-garden days.

The rose-garden days are over." And he launches into a list of the things that the coalition government – or the Tory-led government as his leader has said we must now call it – have done wrong. As he does it – fluently, wittily, engagingly – I'm reminded that this man, so quick to enumerate the ways in which he wouldn't be suitable for the top job, has done some of the biggest jobs in Government. In the past six years, he has been Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, and for Trade and Industry, and for Education and Skills, and for Health (with an annual budget bigger than the Irish bail-out), and, in the last year of the Labour government, Home Secretary. He thinks that the planned NHS reforms are a disaster, and that Andrew Lansley has "some strange hold" over David Cameron. He thinks that the school sports decision was "a very big misjudgement", and, of course, that "they've taken absolutely the wrong judgement on the most important thing of all," the economy. "So, I'm not," he says, to nobody's great surprise, "impressed by the policies at all.

I'm impressed with some of the theatricality of it, the showmanship of it. Looking like a Prime Minister who's got energy and drive. You can't fault them on that." As good as Blair, then? "Not quite!" he says, and the way he says it makes me actually want to use the word "twinkle". "Having studied at the feet of the master for so long... Cameron was the guy who was on his feet before I was, giving Blair a standing ovation at his last PMQs, so he's obviously a big fan." Cameron is also, of course, the guy who announced airily to his classmates at Eton that he quite fancied being Prime Minister. What people say about Johnson is that he lacked the confidence, and the killer instinct, for the top job. Does he agree? "Yes," he says, and his response is so quick that I'm disarmed by his lack of calculation. "I don't know about confidence. I can be as confident as the next person. Lots of it's a front, and you can act confident even when you're not. But I didn't want it enough, obviously.

By definition, if you have to think about it, and you're clucking and tutting and thinking 'Should I or shouldn't I go for it?'... The people who do that job well are people who are absolutely determined that 'that's what I want to be'. That," he says, "wasn't me at all." I tell him that a colleague's wife, who had worked with him at Health and the Home Office, said she thought one of the reasons he might not have wanted the top job was because he's always been keen to safeguard his privacy. Is that true? Johnson puts his hands together into a kind of steeple. "Yeah," he says. "That's part of it as well. As I say, you're going to have to sacrifice lots of things in your life to do that job. It was a bit different once I became Home Secretary, because I had to sacrifice a lot of that anyway, because you have 24-hour protection. But, for whatever reason, it wasn't a burning ambition. It's difficult," he says, and it sounds as though he's actually thinking aloud, "to know whether you played it the right way. But I was never playing it any way.

I didn't even plan to be a Member of Parliament, let alone a government minister." He was, in fact, General Secretary of the Communication Workers Union when Tony Blair saw him in a documentary that Michael Cockerell made about his campaign against the privatisation of Royal Mail, and, the story goes, offered him a safe seat. Is that true? "Partly," he says. "Well, I was on the NEC of the Labour Party, so unfortunately he had to endure me every month at that stage, and we fought a really good campaign, which the documentary was all about. He was impressed by the way we did that, so he asked me if I had an ambition to be an MP, to which I said 'No'. To which he said, 'Oh, I'd like you to be an MP'.

To which I said 'Oh, I'll have a think about it!'" When Johnson reached the conclusion that Blair already had, he was offered the safe seat of Hull West and Hessle, which he has held since 1997, and where he found, weirdly, given that he grew up (in a near-slum) in Notting Hill and then a council flat in Battersea, nine relatives he'd never met. His wife (his second wife, who he married in 1991, and with whom he has a 10-year-old son, and whose existence, when I read of it, gave me one of those ridiculous stabs of disappointment you get when you hear that some famously eligible Hollywood star is dating some fabulously glamorous model, even though Johnson is no spring chicken, and not a Hollywood star) told him that he could do whatever he wanted, but that he shouldn't expect to find her "dragging along behind". She also, he says, with what I'm again tempted to call a twinkle, told him that if he ever wanted to "spend more time" with his family, he should check with his family first.

Unlike the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister, the former Prime Minister, and Johnson's boss, who, although apparently a grown up, is very keen on talking about being a "dad", he never mentions his family in his public role. "Somebody," he says, "came and did an interview and said I had family portraits on the mantelpiece. There are," he says, gesturing towards it, "no family members at all. There are two cats," (so that's where it comes from!), "sadly deceased. I don't go in for all that stuff. There's a view that these days you've got to kind of keep on pushing your family. I'm afraid that's not for me." I feel like cheering, but instead I ask him about the economics primer, which was taken rather literally by people keen to portray him as a lightweight. Does he regret it? Johnson makes a face. "I don't," he says, "because there's no point regretting things you say that were just fun. What I would regret would be if I made a real mistake on letting someone down, or letting the leader down. But that was just a joke, pure and simple.

I was reading Roy Jenkins's biography of Gladstone at the time I was made shadow Chancellor and there's a bit where Lord Russell, the Prime Minister in 1860, asked Disraeli to be his Chancellor, and Disraeli said, 'But I don't know anything about figures', and Russell said, 'Don't worry, they do it all for you over in the Treasury'. There are very few people who have become Chancellor who have been economists. I've done five Cabinet jobs. This is fine." And did he want to be Chancellor? Had he thought about it? "I hadn't," he says, "but then I hadn't thought about any jobs I was offered before I was offered them. Put it like this: I was really happy to pick up Education and Health; less so the Home Office, but it proved to be very, very satisfying. I wouldn't have been overjoyed to be offered the job of Chancellor, but I'd have done it." But he isn't Chancellor. He's shadow Chancellor. He doesn't get to make any real policy, or spend any money, or run any departments, or balance any books. Does it feel like a proper job?

Something crosses Johnson's face, which looks a tiny bit like a struggle between his knee-jerk honesty and what is, in every sense of the word, politic. "Ye-e-es," he says. "This one does feel like a proper job. I'm having to learn the different angles of it, so you have to put much more effort in it. But," he says, and the struggle evaporates from his face, "it's not that job. There's not 10,000 civil servants helping you for a start". Opposition, he has said, is "bloody depressing". It is, he says now, "crap". "We had," he says, "this funny thing where we all shadowed ourselves. You suddenly saw the Speaker had a left-hand profile, and you notice their side looking a bit more care-worn, but with that gleam in the eye, because they're in power, whereas we sat there pretending that what we did was important. It is," he adds hastily, "important in a democracy. But it's not the same." No, it certainly isn't.

Mugging up on your economics primer, and attacking every cut suggested by the Government, and making pronouncements about how VAT hits the poor the hardest, is not the same as running, and rescuing, or wrecking, depending on where you're sitting, an economy. I, too, I tell him (we've got so much in common!) have been mugging up on economics to compensate for a former, er, deficit, and it seems to me, not least since pretty much every economist in the world failed to predict the global economic crisis, that there's absolutely no way of knowing if it's the Keynsian pro-fiscal stimulus ones, or the pro-austerity ones, who are right. So what makes him think he is? His answer, as you might expect from someone who's been doing a lot of mugging up, and who is famously fantastically fast at mastering a brief, even, presumably, when the brief is a country which may or may not be on the brink of economic disaster, is extremely long. It's also rather impressive.

It takes in the beginnings of a fragile recovery flickering into life after decisions that the Labour government made, Irish austerity and collapse, Obama's recent decision to go for further fiscal stimulus, Japan, IFS statistics on poverty, and false comparisons with Greece, and ends with the conclusion that "the whole lot combined is a very, very big gamble". Which it very clearly is, but surely he must admit that Labour lost the argument on the deficit? For a brief moment, the blue eyes don't just sparkle, they flash. "I don't," he says, "think we lost it at the General Election. Us and the Lib Dems were saying the same thing. What's the reason Osborne wants to go at this like a bull at a gate? They say they had to calm down some of the people in the City, but there's no evidence for that whatsoever. We were in Government! We knew all the statistics." Well OK, but Labour, to be frank, are doing pretty appallingly. Aren't they? Once again, I see something in the eyes which appears to be an instinct for honesty mixed with hesitation. "There was the leadership campaign," he says. "I think that went on too long.

My regret, and it's not about who won it... but it seemed to me sensible to have a leadership election that finished in July, and a leader then in place with a shadow cabinet and able to shape that conference. It was," he says, "a bad week". You can say that again. I practically needed counselling, I tell him, after watching the younger Miliband publically disembowelling his brother, and then declaring undying love. And I've never even met the guy. David Miliband is Alan Johnson's friend. What on earth was it like for him? "I said at the time," he says, "that it would have been wrong for Ed, a big political talent who lots of people supported, to have stepped down just because he happened to be David's brother". He doesn't, to be fair, sound like a man who was devastated by the result. And when I ask him why Ed's performance seems so lacklustre, he insists that he is "playing this absolutely right". You have, he says, "to have a period of calm reflection on what you got right, and what you got wrong. Ed's got that.

There is real steel inside." Well, I tell him, a bit nastily, most people in the country think the steel is only about personal ambition, and not about what politicians like to call a "vision". His rating as a good leader, according to a recent poll, is 17 per cent. "That," says Johnson calmly, and he doesn't seem to be making a gargantuan effort, "will change as people get to know him". There have been big efforts, in the past few weeks, by the kind of people who follow this kind of thing, to sniff out conflict between Alan Johnson and Ed Miliband. Johnson, they say, is opposed to the graduate tax. Miliband is in favour of it. Johnson doesn't want to keep the 50p tax rate. Miliband, as a matter of principle, does. When I ask him about these differences of opinion, he is careful, but not, I think, dishonest. The two men are, he says, "working together" to see if a graduate tax is the answer. Both have accepted that it is "inconceivable" that the 50p tax rate won't be needed at the time of the next election.

Johnson won't say a single disloyal word about his boss, and his respect for him appears, if not exactly passionate, to be genuine. But when he really comes alive is when he talks about the counselling schemes that he introduced to help people off incapacity benefit, and a teenage pregnancy strategy in Hull, and working tax credits, and the minimum wage. And when I ask why Labour didn't build more social housing, he says: "It has to be mea culpa; we didn't do enough". When asked for other mea culpas, he volunteers a flood of them, from allowing the economy to be dominated by financial services to failures in social mobility. This, it is abundantly clear, is a man who cares, with a passion born of experience that the PPE politico-boys literally couldn't imagine, about the kinds of people who don't grow up dreaming of Downing Street.

He's a man who loves poetry almost as much as the rock music he used to perform, and wishes he still did, and who quotes Larkin to me, and Marvell, and whose bookshelves, I see when the photographer arrives and I'm allowed to snoop around, have books about Picasso, and novels by Colm Toibin and Hilary Mantel and, rather touchingly, a book called Speechwriting: The Expert Guide. He's a man who says that the best life he could imagine would be "writing songs and not being recognised". He is, I think, just as bright as the politico-boys, but a lot less keen on showing off. "We were in a bar the other night," says his aide, just after telling me my time is up, "and I overheard someone saying 'There's someone famous over there, but I don't know his name'". Johnson laughs. "I guess," he says, "I'm never going to make it now". As PM, I ask, or as a rock star? Alan Johnson flashes me that lovely, lovely, smile. "Both," he says, and quite a big part of me wishes he was wrong.

Life in brief Born London, 17 May 1950 Family Orphaned at the age of 12, he was brought up by his elder sister in a council flat. Married twice and has four children Early life He attended Sloane Grammar School in Chelsea and left at 15 to stack shelves in Tesco Career After working as a postman, he joined the Union of Communication Workers and was a member of Labour's National Executive Committee. He was elected to Parliament in 1997 in the safe Labour seat of Hull West and Hessle. Was given his first ministerial role in the Department of Trade and Industry in 1999. He entered the Cabinet in 2004 as Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. His subsequent Cabinet posts were DTI and Education before he became Health Secretary in June 2007 under new Labour leader Gordon Brown. Became Home Secretary in 2009. After Labour lost the 2010 general election he was appointed Shadow Chancellor. More about:

Question: Who became Shadow Chancellor after the 2010 General Election?
Answer: Alan Johnson