Ed Balls

Ed Balls is a broadcaster, writer and economist. He is Professor of Political Economy at King’s College, London, a Research Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School and co-Chair of the UK Holocaust Memorial Foundation.

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About Ed Balls

Ed is a regular presenter on ITV’s flagship breakfast show, Good Morning Britain and currently appears weekly on Channel 4’s The Andrew Neil Show alongside former Chancellor George Osborne.

Ed’s has fronted numerous documentaries for the BBC including the critically acclaimed Inside the Care Crisis with Ed Balls was broadcast in November 2021. Prior to this he presented Travels in Trumpland: with Ed Balls, which was broadcast on BBC Two; exploring American attitudes toward issues such as gun control, immigration and examining why Trump’s values became so popular, and the follow up series Travels in Euroland with Ed Balls. This saw Ed visiting Europe to discover how the divisions exposed by Brexit have been reflected across the EU. He has also fronted What Britain Buys And Sells In A Day (BBC 2) alongside Ade Adepitan and Cherry Healey and was part of the core ITN Election Night team in 2017 and 2019.

In 2021 Ed was the inaugural winner of Celebrity Best Home Cook (BBC One), which inspired his book, ‘Appetite: a Memoir in Recipes of Family and Food’, published by Simon & Schuster in August 2021. Like his previous book ‘Speaking Out: Lessons in Life and Politics’, this went on to be a Sunday Times bestseller.

Ed was a Labour MP for ten years, during which time he was Economic Secretary to the Treasury and Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families. He was appointed as Shadow Secretary of State for Education, followed by Shadow Home Secretary after the 2010 General Election. In 2011 he was appointed as Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, a role which he held until his defeat as an MP in the 2015 general election.

Following his election defeat, he became a Senior Fellow at Harvard University Kennedy School’s Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government, and a Visiting Professor to the Policy Institute at King’s College London.

Ed is married to Yvette Cooper MP, and in 2007 they became the first married couple to serve together in the Cabinet. They have three children and live in London and Castleford. His interests include learning the piano, running, cooking, sailing, and supporting Norwich City, where he is a Vice-President and former Club Chairman

Ed is a Patron of the British Stammering Association and a member of the Holocaust Memorial Foundation Board.