Ed Balls: 'I couldn't give a toss' about criticism

Ed Balls, the shadow chancellor, has said that he "couldn't give a toss" about the criticism he has received over the way he replied to the chancellor George Osborne's autumn statement in the Commons.

In an interview with Sky's Dermot Murnaghan, Balls said on Sunday that Ed Miliband and other senior Labour figures had congratulated him on his performance and that he was not worried because he believed he was winning the argument.

"I've been doing this for 20 years and I've never been less bothered about gossiping and the tittle-tattle, it doesn't matter at all," he said.

"In the end, if the country don't want a Labour government, if the country think George Osborne is on their side, then I've got a problem. Until then, it isn't a problem."

Balls was subjected to particularly loud and aggressive barracking by Conservative MPs on Thursday and, as he resorted to shouting to get through his statement, he appeared unsettled. This led to hostile briefing against him in the press, and some renewed speculation that he could be moved before the election.

But Balls told Sky that most people did not spend their time watching Commons debates and that what was much more important was winning the debate among the public at large.

"The nature of politics is, you either spend your time in the bubble, obsessed, reading all the diary columns, worried about the Daily Mail, or you think let's go and talk to people about what's happening in their lives."

The day after the autumn statement the Institute for Fiscal Studies published an analysis showing that living standards were not rising for most people, he said. "I think we are winning the argument," he added.

Asked about suggestions he might be replaced as shadow chancellor, Balls replied: "The reason why you ask me these questions is because you want me to be bothered. Frankly, I couldn't give a toss."

Some Labour figures believe that Balls is a liability because he is too closely associated with Gordon Brown and his economic strategy and because Balls does not accept that Labour spent too much money before the financial crash.

Pressed to apologise for Labour's economic record, he repeated his often-stated assertion that Labour should have regulated the banks more aggressively. He conceded that Labour was running "a very small deficit on the current account" before the banking crisis, but he said that was not the "big mistake" of the period.

"When the deficit went up so much, if we had known in advance that was going to happen, would we have decided to raise taxes or cut spending? No, we would have decided to intervene in the banking world to stop that financial crisis happening in the first place."

Lord Kinnock, the former Labour leader, told the Andrew Marr Show on Sunday that Balls was being attacked simply because "most of the press are lined up very vehemently against him".

The peer went on: "He had 300 Tory MPs screaming their heads off against him, and it is the truth – as they well know, which is why they organise it – that barracking on a sustained basis is hugely distracting."

In a separate interview, Lord Puttnam, the Labour peer and film producer, said the election of Ed Miliband as leader was "a considerable gift to the Tory party".

Puttnam, who backed David Miliband for the Labour leadership, said that having David as leader would have made life "a lot tougher" for the coalition. He said that Ed Miliband had done well, and that he was "prime ministerial material", but that he did not expect the party to win an outright majority at the election.