Edward Michael Balls (born 25 February 1967) is a British broadcaster, economist and former politician. He served as a junior minister in the treasury portfolio from 2006 to 2007, as Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families from 2007 to 2010, and as Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer from 2011 to 2015. A member of Labour Co-op, he was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Normanton and later for Morley and Outwood between 2005 and 2015.
Balls attended Nottingham High School before he studied philosophy, politics and economics at Keble College, Oxford, and was later a Kennedy Scholar in economics at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. He was a teaching fellow at Harvard from 1988 to 1990, when he joined the Financial Times as the lead economic writer. Balls had joined the Labour Party while attending Nottingham High School, and became an adviser to Shadow Chancellor Gordon Brown in 1994, continuing in this role after Labour won the 1997 general election, and eventually becoming the Chief Economic Adviser to the Treasury.
At the 2005 general election, Balls was elected as the MP for Normanton (which in 2010 became Morley and Outwood), and in 2006 became Economic Secretary to the Treasury. When Brown became Prime Minister in 2007, Balls became Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, serving until the 2010 general election, in which Labour was defeated after 13 years in government. Balls retained his seat, however, and was appointed Shadow Secretary of State for Education under (temporary) Leader of the Opposition Harriet Harman. In the 2010 Labour leadership election, which had been triggered by Brown's resignation as Leader of the Labour Party, Balls ran as a candidate but placed third. He was then appointed, by new Labour leader Ed Miliband, as Shadow Home Secretary. He served in this role until 2011, when he was appointed Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, a role that he held until he was unseated at the 2015 general election.
Following his electoral 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. He was appointed chairman of Norwich City F.C. in December 2015, a position he held until December 2018. In 2020, he was appointed Professor of Political Economy at King's College London. Balls was a contestant on series 14 of the BBC's Strictly Come Dancing, surviving until week 10, and in 2021 was the winner in the BBC's Celebrity Best Home Cook. He is currently a presenter for the ITV breakfast show Good Morning Britain as well as a host of the politics podcast Political Currency with George Osborne.
Balls' father is zoologist Michael Balls; his mother is Carolyn Janet Riseborough. His younger brother is Andrew Balls, the CIO for Global Fixed Income at the investment firm PIMCO. His grandfather was a lorry driver who died of cancer when Balls was young. His father, in Norfolk, was active in the local Labour party, delivering leaflets, and was chairman of the Campaign for the Advancement of Norfolk Education – CANE.
Balls was born at Norfolk and Norwich Hospital in Norwich. He spent his early years in Bawburgh, Norfolk before moving to Keyworth, Nottinghamshire at the age of eight, where he attended Crossdale Drive Primary School and the private all-boys Nottingham High School.
He was in the school choir, and played violin in the orchestra, where the head of music was Kendrick Partington, the organist of St Peter's Church, Nottingham.
When Prince Philip visited the school in 1984 to open a new science block, Balls, as a Venture scout in the sixth form, met the Prince wearing outdoor walking clothing. Ed Davey, as head boy, met the Prince too, as one of three brothers who had gained the Duke of Edinburgh gold award.
He was a house captain, and gained A-levels in English, History, and Economics in 1985.
Raised as an Anglican he read Philosophy, politics and economics at Keble College, Oxford, graduating with a First – according to John Rentoul in The Independent – ahead of David Cameron. Later he attended the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, where he was a Kennedy Scholar specialising in Economics.
Balls joined the Labour Party in 1983 while still at school. While at Oxford University he was a partially active member of the Labour Club, but also signed up to the Liberal Club as well as the Conservative Association, "because they used to book top-flight political speakers, and only members were allowed to attend their lectures" according to friends. Balls was a founding member of The Steamers, an all-male drinking club, and suffered embarrassment when a contemporary photo of him wearing Nazi uniform appeared in the papers.
Between 1988 and 1990, Balls was a Teaching Fellow at Harvard University. He joined the Financial Times in 1990 as a lead economic writer until his appointment as an economic adviser to Shadow Chancellor Gordon Brown in 1994. When Labour regained power at the 1997 general election, Brown became Chancellor and Balls continued to work as his economic adviser, eventually becoming Chief Economic Adviser to the Treasury.
In July 2004, Balls was selected to stand as Labour and Co-operative candidate for the parliamentary seat of Normanton in West Yorkshire, a Labour stronghold whose MP, Sir Bill O'Brien, was retiring. He stepped down as Chief Economic Adviser to HM Treasury, but was given a position at the Smith Institute, a political think tank. HM Treasury and the Cabinet Office subsequently stated that "the normal and proper procedures were followed".
In the 2005 general election, he was elected MP for Normanton with a majority of 10,002 and 51.2% of the vote. After the Boundary Commission proposed changes which would abolish his constituency, Balls ran a campaign, in connection with the local newspaper the Wakefield Express, to save the seat and, together with the three other Wakefield MPs (his wife Yvette Cooper, Mary Creagh and Jon Trickett), fought an unsuccessful High Court legal action against the Boundary Commission's proposals.
In March 2007, he was selected to be the Labour Party candidate for the new Morley and Outwood constituency; unlike the previous safe Labour seat of Normanton, it was a marginal, which contained parts of the abolished Normanton and Morley and Rothwell constituencies, and was elected for the new seat in May 2010. On 5 February 2013, Balls voted in favour in the House of Commons Second Reading vote on marriage equality in Britain. Balls was a member of the Labour Friends of Israel.
In September 2007, with his wife Yvette Cooper, he was accused by Liberal Democrat MP Norman Baker of "breaking the spirit of Commons rules" by using MPs' allowances to help pay for a £655,000 home in north London. Balls and Cooper bought a four-bedroom house in Stoke Newington, and registered this as their second home (rather than their home in Castleford, West Yorkshire) to qualify for up to £44,000 a year to subsidise a reported £438,000 mortgage under the Commons Additional Costs Allowance, of which they claimed £24,400. Both worked in London full-time and their children attended local London schools. Balls and Cooper claimed that "The whole family travel between their Yorkshire home and London each week when Parliament is sitting. As they are all in London during the week, their children have always attended the nearest school to their London house."
Balls and Cooper "flipped" the designation of their second home three times within the space of two years. In June 2008, they were referred to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards over allegations that they were claiming expenses for what was effectively their main home in London. Their combined claim was £24,000 i.e. "slightly more" than the single MP allowance. The commissioner exonerated them, adding that their motives were not for profit as they paid full capital gains tax.