Ed Balls

The Right Honourable Ed Balls
Official portrait, 2007
Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families
In office 28 June 2007 – 11 May 2010
Prime Minister	Gordon Brown
Preceded by	Alan Johnson
Succeeded by	Michael Gove
Economic Secretary to the Treasury
In office 6 May 2006 – 28 June 2007
Prime Minister	Tony Blair
Preceded by	Ivan Lewis
Succeeded by	Kitty Ussher
Member of Parliament for Morley and Outwood Normanton (2005–2010)
In office 5 May 2005 – 30 March 2015
Preceded by	Bill O'Brien
Succeeded by	Andrea Jenkyns
Shadow Cabinet portfolios
2010	Shadow Secretary of State for Education
2010–2011	Shadow Home Secretary
2011–2015	Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer
Personal details
Born	Edward Michael Balls (1967-02-25) 25 February 1967 (age 57) Norwich, Norfolk, England
Political party	Labour Co-op
Spouse	Yvette Cooper ​ (m. 1998)​
Children	3
Parent(s)	Michael Balls Carolyn Riseborough
Residence(s)	London, England Castleford, West Yorkshire, England
Alma mater	Keble College, Oxford (BA) Harvard University (MPA)
Signature
Website	www.edballs.co.uk
Ed Balls's voice Balls speaks at the opening of Bristol Brunel Academy Recorded 6 September 2007

Edward Michael Balls (born 25 February 1967) is a British politician, broadcaster and economist. He served 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; Labour were defeated after 13 years in government. Balls was appointed Shadow Secretary of State for Education under Harriet Harman (as temporary leader) and finished in third place at the 2010 Labour leadership election, triggered by Brown's resignation as Leader of the Labour Party, after which he was appointed as Ed Miliband's 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.^[1] 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.