Fraser Nelson: Balls is a crypto-Soviet, I am a crypto-McCarthyite ...

Fraser Nelson, Spectator editor and arch-Thatcherite, takes issue with what seems a perfectly reasonable - you might even say innocuous - statement by Ed Balls in his Sunday Times interview today:

“I think our family policy now is actually about the strength of the adult relationships and that is important for the progress of the children.”

What is Fraser actually objecting to in this statement? We don't really find out, as he immediately goes off on a tangent, parroting the Tory line about promoting marriage and ending welfare depedency - oh, and of course, Balls is a crypto-Soviet "lefty":

"Does Balls have any idea about the extent of which the welfare state under Labour has robbed the low-income family of its economic function, about how adults are no longer better off together, and incentivised to split up with all the effects that has on the children? But it gets better: children are to be given lessons in the importance of relationships from 2011. More resources may be given to marriage guidance services. It’s like Balls is mentally living in 1975 Moscow. Family problems? Why, the Party will simply ask the schools to simply program the kids to be better at relationships."

Is it just me, or do relationship lessons in school sound like a reasonable, moderate, interesting idea? We have already have Relate for grown-ups. Why not start earlier? Certainly, as evidence of Balls' Brezhnev-style statism, it is pretty weak.

So why are the Tories - and the Right - apparently so scared of Balls, if his politics are so old-fashioned? Are they worried his policies might actually be popular?

Sounds like McCarthyite paranoia to me. And if Fraser Nelson wants to talk about jobs ...

Unemployment under Thatcher peaked at 3.5m. That's 3.5m families "robbed of their economic function". And the Centre for Economic Policy Research estimates that unemployment in the 1930s peaked at 15% in 1932.

In this recession, at least the Government is trying to do something about it. The UK unemployment rate was 7.9% in the last quarter. Wild predictions of 3m or even 4m unemployed now - touch wood - seem wide of the mark.

This is because of Government action like the Young Britain campaign - a pledge to create 85,000 jobs for the young - more apprenticeships and university places.

Balls may be stuck in the 1970s ... Nelson - who would apparently do nothing but tinker with marriage rules - is stuck in the 1930s, 15% unemployment and all.