We know that Ed Balls is supposed to be Labour's attack dog on the economy. He is a tour de force at the despatch box, railing at George Osborne for his lack of a plan B and never budging an inch on the fact that he believes that coalition's cuts are 'too far, too fast'.
But in his speech today, it was a different Ed Balls who addressed the Labour Party conference in Liverpool.
"I didn't quite get the end right," he admitted as I sat with a group of delegates outside the hall. "I think I rushed some bits. How often did I rush?"
All the media build up to his speech lead us to believe that he was going to push a more nuanced line on the economy, admitting that Labour made mistakes while in government but that the coalition is also to blame. In a way, Balls was almost a victim of his own incredibly slick media operation - by the time he actually stood up to speak, there was very little he was going to say that we hadn't already read in the paper or heard him say on radio or television this morning.
To an extent, he did achieve this more subtle approach, which made a stark contrast with his 'we desperately need a plan B' refrain he's employed for the past few months. But as a strategy to unveil in a conference speech, it didn't quite succeed. Conference is all about clear messages that delegates and journalists can get hold of. Strong, broad-brush ideas ideally with a few nuggets of previously-unrevealed detail buried in there too.
In this speech, Balls' approach was confusing. We also got lines like 'it’s not right to blame David Cameron and George Osborne for everything that’s wrong with our economy' followed later by 'these are David Cameron's mistakes, George Osborne's mistakes, Nick Clegg's mistakes'. Which is it, Ed?
Delegates found themselves cheering his statement that 'Tory Britain is no safe haven', whereas I'm sure if you asked them in a different context they wouldn't be expressing enthusiasm for the stark facts of Britain's struggling economy.
Balls laid out the "five immediate steps" that he feels the government should be taking to bring about growth. But coupled with his admission of the six mistakes that Labour made with public spending, it was all too easy to remember that he actually has very little real influence over the direction of our economy.
It's a prerequisite for a minister or shadow minister that they get a standing ovation at the end of a conference speech. And Balls did, but he mistimed the ending of his speech so that the audience only realised he'd finished when he shuffled his papers on the lectern and prepared to step away. As he said himself, he didn't get it quite right.
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