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Edward Michael "Ed" Balls (born 25 February 1967) is a British Labour Party and Co-operative Party politician, who has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Morley and Outwood since 2010, and is the current Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer. From 2005 to 2010, he was the MP for Normanton and he served as Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families under Gordon Brown from 2007 to 2010. Balls is married to current Shadow Home Secretary and fellow Labour MP Yvette Cooper. In June 2007 they became the first married couple to serve together in a British Cabinet when Cooper became Chief Secretary to the Treasury.
Political career
In July 2004, Balls was selected to stand as Labour and Co-operative candidate for the parliamentary seat of Normanton in West Yorkshire, a ...
Ed Balls, the shadow chancellor, warned the "world is making the 1930s mistake" after Moody's move to put Britain on “negative” watch amid fears of contagion from the eurozone debt crisis.
"Even though it is clear in Greece, in Ireland, in other countries, in Britain too (that) this austerity isn't working, the message is 'Plough on, dig a deeper hole, carry on with an austerity that is failing'," he told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme.
"I fear what's happening here is that the world is making the 1930s mistake and the ratings agencies are partly responsible for this," he ...
... in the City
The shadow chancellor has one priority – to give Labour a chance of winning the election.
Things can only get better. The battle hymn of Tony Blair, as borrowed from D:Ream, may be as relevant for Broke Britannia as it was for Cool Britannia. Like Noah, George Osborne hopes for a sign that the economic floodwaters are abating. In this version of Genesis, Tesco gets to play the dove, yesterday offering 20,000 jobs by way of an olive branch.
When Norman Lamont talked of green shoots in 1991, he was reviled for his optimism. Shriti Vadera, a front-bencher in Gordon ...
... proud to turn down help from a top City firm
Fat-Cat-bashing Labour bigwigs are not too proud to refuse donations from a top City firm. Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls gets nearly £60,000 of help from accountants PricewaterhouseCoopers in the shape of a research assistant for his Commons’ office. And last year Business spokesman Chuka Umunna got a £30,000 aide from PwC. Up with the workers!
Dapper Energy Minister Greg Barker is so attached to his 11-week-old dachshund Otto that he brings it to the Commons in a designer bag – in defiance of Parliament’s ban on ...