Ed Balls

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...