A Balls up or what Labour really thinks of Wales?

The Labour leadership contest to replace former PM Gordon Brown rolled into town today at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff and ahead of the hustings Ed Balls, Shadow Education Secretary and former economic advisor to Gordon Brown told the Wales on Sunday that the Barnett Formula was not unfair to Wales and that Wales benefitted disproportionally from other Benefits and European Funding because of the needs.

He said ‘“The important thing that I know from my time in the Treasury is that the Barnett Formula applies to part of public spending. But you’ve also got in addition to that, the spending outside the Barnett Formula which comes on the basis of need... because of unemployment, because of child poverty, and also because of the need for regeneration.”

Mr Balls also said Wales had “disproportionately benefited” from European aid, unemployment benefits and tax credit support “because there has been greater need and disadvantage in some parts of Wales because of the legacy of the Thatcher unemployment of the 1980s”.

He said it was important to focus on these “non-Barnett spending lines” which the Tories were now targeting. “Their welfare reforms are welfare cuts,” he said.

“It’s the biggest threat to the welfare state for 60 years, it’s a welfare state which has hugely been of benefit in particular to Wales, and seeing a family in Wales now where you have two adults on £15,000 a year each – not big salaries – they’ll lose £500 directly in child tax credits because of the decisions in the Budget. And that is a loss which will disproportionately hit Wales outside of Barnett.

“So we need to keep talking about these wider, long-term spending decisions, but let’s also be clear: when it comes to public spending based on need, Wales has benefited, the Tories and Liberals are trying to cut it, and we need to make sure that we campaign together and robustly against those cuts.”

I wonder what Peter Hain, Carwyn Jones and Jane Hutt make of those comments from Ed Balls and what does it say about their influence they have inside the Labour Party?Any source