WITH the leak of the Balls papers, the political soap opera of the TBGBs, as they became known, have returned.

Should we be bothered about yet another slice of New Labour history?

Well, yes, and for this reason: cui bono – who benefits?

Of course, we all know the Blair-Brown relationship became completely dysfunctional, that the then bellowing chancellor was mentally throwing daggers at his neighbour to get him out of No 10.

But what all these memos and documents do is bring up something that Ed Miliband wanted consigned to history: bitter Labour factionalism.

And because it embroils Ed Balls – then Brown’s key aide, now Mr Miliband’s Shadow Chancellor – then it detracts from Labour’s assault on the Coalition Government and it seeks to transplant that old destructive infighting into the heart of the new Opposition.

Hence, Mr Miliband’s vow yesterday that the current generation of Labour chiefs would not repeat the “mistakes” of Messrs Blair and Brown.

“Frankly this is ancient history; that era is over and we are looking forward to the future,” he declared – no doubt privately fuming at the latest revelations.

As for the papers themselves, they simply reaffirm what we already knew: that the Blair-Brown relationship was poisonous.

“Shallow, inconsistent and muddled” was the then chancellor’s view of his comrade in No 10.

Intriguingly, the bid to oust the PM was codenamed Project Volvo because pollsters had described the Scot as being like a dull but reliable Volvo.

Reports yesterday insisted that what the documents showed was how Mr Balls was embroiled in a “brutal” plot to oust Mr Blair.

A slight exaggeration as the adjective was used thus: “If we are to renew Labour, we will have to be as rigorous and as brutal as we were in the creation of new Labour.”

Of course, one could interpret “renewing Labour” as a euphemism for getting rid of TB.

Yet, Mr Balls was adamant there was no plot. “The idea there was a plot or a coup is untrue and not justified by these papers,” insisted the Yorkshire MP.

So going back to the question of who benefits? David Cameron, of course.

Michael Fallon, the Conservative attack dog, leapt in to link Mr Balls and – more importantly from the Tory viewpoint – Mr Miliband to factionalism, saying: “Instead of owning up to their role in a dysfunctional government and coming up with a credible plan to deal with the problems facing Britain, they are starting to plot against each other.

“They can never be trusted with government again.”

But why leak the papers now? This is harder to answer. Perhaps they only recently turned up? Yet their purpose seems clear.

Today, more revelations about “Labour’s economic mistakes” are promised. Mr Miliband will have to endure more ghostly haunting of Labour’s squabbling past while smiles break out at Tory HQ.