Ed Balls 

SHORT BIOGRAPHY

Ed Balls is a broadcaster, writer and economist. A regular presenter on ITV’s flagship breakfast show, Good Morning Britain, Ed also co-hosts a weekly podcast, Political Currency, with former Chancellor George Osborne and has presented a number of documentaries for the BBC. 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. He is a former member of Parliament, Shadow Chancellor, Cabinet Minister and Chief Economic Adviser to the Treasury. He cooks, sails, plays the piano, drums and is a Norwich City Vice-President and Club Ambassador. He is married to Yvette Cooper MP and they have three children.

FULL BIOGRAPHY

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.

Ed is a regular presenter on ITV’s flagship breakfast show, Good Morning Britain, and co-hosts a weekly podcast, Political Currency, with former Chancellor George Osborne which is produced by Persephonica. His latest BBC series, ‘Inside the Care Crisis with Ed Balls’ aired on BBC2 in November 2021. His first BBC TV series ‘Travels in Trumpland: with Ed Balls’ was broadcast in July 2018 and a second series ‘Travels in Euroland with Ed Balls’ aired on BBC 2 in January 2020. Ed has also presented the BBC TV series ‘What Britain Buys And Sells In A Day’ with Ade Adepitan and Cherry Healey which broadcast in October 2019. He was part of the core ITN Election night team in 2017 and 2019, broadcasts regularly on BBC’s The One Show, Radio 2, Radio 3 and Radio 4. Ed was the winner of the BBC’s Celebrity Best Home Cook in February 2021. He was a contestant on Strictly Come Dancing 2016 and was nominated for a Bafta for TV moment of the year in 2016 and as part of the ITN General Election team in 2017 and 2019 and appeared weekly on Channel 4’s The Andrew Neil Show.

Ed was UK Shadow Chancellor from 2011 to 2015 and co-chaired the Center for American Progress Inclusive Prosperity Commission with former US Treasury Secretary, Larry Summers, which reported in January 2015. Ed served in the British Cabinet as Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families (2007-2010). He was previously the UK Minister for Financial Services (2006-2007), Chief Economic Adviser to the UK Treasury (1999-2004), during which time he was the Chair of the IMFC Deputies and UK G20 Deputy, and Economic Adviser to the Chancellor (1997-99).

Ed was the Labour & Co-operative Member of Parliament for Morley and Outwood (2010-2015) and MP for Normanton (2005-2010).

As Chief Economic Adviser to the Treasury (1997-2004), Ed led the design of policies including independence of the Bank of England, the UK Fiscal Code and the introduction of performance budgeting, New Deal jobs programme, the Five Tests Euro assessment, Sure Start, tax credits and the national minimum wage. As a Treasury Minister, he was commissioned by the G7 Finance Ministers to prepare a report with Sir Jon Cunliffe (now deputy Governor of the Bank of England) on Economic Aspects of the Israel-Palestine conflict. At the Department for Children, Schools and Families, Ed brought together schools and children's policy for the first time in the Children's Plan and pushed through radical and progressive policies including raising the education and training age to 18, reform of the social work profession, establishing the support staff negotiating body and extra investment in youth services and short breaks for disabled children and their families.

As Shadow Chancellor, Ed was awarded the Spectator Parliamentarian of the Year and the Political Studies Association Politician of the Year. He served as a member of the Prime Minister’s Holocaust Commission and the Holocaust Memorial Foundation Board which, since 2018, he has co-Chaired with Lord Eric Pickles.

At King’s College, Ed was a Visiting Professor (2015-2020) and is now Professor of Political Economy in the Department of Political Economy. He is now in his ninth year teaching a graduate class on The Treasury since 1945 with Professor Jon Davis and Lord Nick Macpherson.  At Harvard, Ed was a Senior fellow (2015-2017) and is now a Research Fellow in the Kennedy School of Government’s Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government. Since 2015, Ed has led a project on the evolution of central banking post-financial crisis; he has collaborated, initially with Peter Sands, and with a team of graduate students on the impact of Brexit on British business, UK trade and the future of Global Britain, publishing six working papers; and he is currently leading a project on regional growth and inequality in the UK. He has given seminars at Harvard, Yale, NYU, Stanford and USC in the US as well as at the Treasury, DHCLG, the Bank of England, the IFS and King’s College, London. He has also served as a consultant at the International Monetary Fund, the OECD and at the EU, advising on fiscal frameworks and performance budgeting.  

Ed’s Archive on 4 documentary, ‘Virtues of Vulnerability’ was broadcast in January 2020 and won a Silver award in the Human Relations Documentary category at the 2020 New York Radio Awards and a Gold Award in the Human Interest category of the Association of International Broadcasting 2020 Awards. In 2017, he presented the first ‘Dream Dinner Party’ for BBC Radio 4, and in 2019 Ed nominated the English composer, Herbert Howells, for BBC Radio 4’s Great Lives. In November 2023, Ed presented a concert of the work of Howells by the BBC Singers at Norwich Cathedral and St Martin in the Fields, to be broadcast on BBC Radio 3, in which he also conducted two pieces alongside lead conductor Nicholas Chalmers and organist Ashley Grote. Ed appeared in the BBC series Who Do You Think You Are? in November 2021. As well as being a regular guest on This Week, Peston on Sunday, Peston, Steph’s Packed Lunch and The One Show, Ed has also appeared on Sport Relief Celebrity Bake-off, been a guest chair on Have I Got New for You and made guest appearances on Would I Lie to You,  Insert Name Here, The Michael McIntyre Show, Watchdog, QI, Celebrity Supply Teacher, Richard Osman’s House of Games, The News Quiz and The Wheel. He has presented Friday Night is Music Night and other radio programmes sharing his love of musical theatre for BBC Radio 2 and in 2023 will present a programme on Herbert Howells for BBC Radio 3. He also performed with Frank Skinner and Harry Hill at the Queen’s 92nd birthday concert at the Royal Albert Hall. In February 2019, Ed climbed Kilimanjaro with eight other well-known climbers, raising over £2m for Comic Relief

Born in Norwich in 1967, his family moved to Nottingham when Ed was 8. He attended Crossdale Drive primary school and then Nottingham High School. Ed went on to study economics and philosophy at Keble College, Oxford, and economics and politics (MPA) at the John F Kennedy School of Government, Harvard. Ed was a teaching fellow in the Department of Economics, Harvard (1988-90) and a leader writer and columnist at the Financial Times (1990-94) where he was the Wincott Young Financial Journalist of the Year. He has also written regularly for the Financial Times, Sunday Times, Guardian, New Statesman and Tribune and co-authored a number of books, papers, articles and pamphlets.

Ed’s second book, ‘Appetite: a Memoir in Recipes of Family and Food’ was published by Simon & Schuster in August 2021 and was a Sunday Times Top Ten bestseller. His previous book ‘Speaking Out: Lessons in Life and Politics’ was published by Penguin Random House in 2016 and was also ranked a Top Ten bestseller.

Ed is Vice President of Action for Stammering Children, a Patron of the British Stammering Association, a Patron of Whizz-Kidz, a Fellow of City Lit and the WEA and a board director of the John Smith Centre at Glasgow University. He has run the London Marathon three times since 2011, raising over £160,000 for WhizzKidz and Action for Stammering Children. He is a member of the Privy Council, an Honorary Fellow of Keble College, Oxford and has been awarded honorary degrees by the University of East Anglia, the University of Nottingham and Nottingham Trent University.

Ed is Vice-President and Club Ambassador of Norwich City Football Club having previously been Club Chairman from December 2015 - December 2018.

Ed is married to Yvette Cooper MP. They have three children and live in London and Castleford. His interests include learning the piano, running, cooking, sailing, drumming and supporting Norwich City.