Sources close to Balls suggest he would be much more comfortable serving under Ed Miliband, reveals this week’s New Statesman.

Both Eds take a less hawkish line on the deficit than David Miliband, who is committed to Alistair Darling’s plan arbitrarily to halve the deficit over four years. A friend of Balls tells the magazine: “If David is leader, and he makes Ed [Balls] shadow chancellor, there’s a real risk of a repeat of the Blair-Brown wars.”

But in his politics column, Mehdi Hasan reveals:

I am told that Balls has done another deal with his wife, Yvette Cooper, the shadow work and pensions secretary, who stood aside in June to allow her husband to run for the leadership. The well-regarded Cooper – a former financial journalist, with an MSc in economics from the LSE – had been touted by some in Westminster as a potential shadow chancellor.

But she has privately agreed to allow Balls to go for the job of shadow chancellor, too, and has backed his position on the deficit in public.

Hasan argues that “there is no alternative to Ed Balls as shadow chancellor at this time of national emergency”.

Though I think Yvette Cooper would do just as well, and has been known to be quite pugnacious and aggressive when needed.

Update: Ed Balls’ team has already dismissed this on Twitter as “total garbage & invention”