OPINION: Good Morning Britain welcomed home secretary Yvette Cooper onto the show while her husband Ed Balls sat in the presenting chair
Ed Balls needs to be axed from GMB before a bigger mistake is made (Image: ITV)
Come on now, ITV, it’s getting embarrassing. With Yvette Cooper now home secretary under Labour, it’s past time to oust Ed Balls from his Good Morning Britain perch instead of allowing him to sit quietly while his wife is grilled on politics.
Yes, that’s right. On yesterday’s instalment of flagship breakfast news programme GMB, Susanna Reid was left to grill the MP by herself, while Ed sat mutely beside her. The segment sparked accusations of “insane bias” after Reid referred to Cooper as Ed’s “other half” live on-air, before Ed disappeared from screens to give the impression he wasn’t involved in the interrogation.
First married in 1998 when Ed was Tony Blair’s economic secretary, Yvette has seen her husband work as education secretary under Gordon Brown, shadow chancellor under the Tories, and even stand for Labour leadership himself in 2010. Cooper herself has been an MP since 1997, working her own way through various ministerial positions.
Worse, when Labour first got elected, Ed was allowed to interview his own wife in a bold move from ITV, which the broadcaster later insisted was “fair”. Chief executive Dame Carolyn McCall said they “would not do it again” but stated: “here was a national emergency almost being called, and so we got very short notice that the home secretary was coming on the show.”
Ed and Yvette have been married since 1998 (Image: Getty)
It doesn’t end there. Given Cooper’s precarious position as home secretary, it hardly seems right for her very own husband to defend the government’s position on the migrant crisis as thousands of undocumented immigrants make their way into the UK each month.
Labour have set out a “one in, one out” policy which has so far failed to materialise. He blasted the Conservatives’ attempted Rwanda scheme, saying on September 1: “Even if the Rwanda scheme had worked, that was hundreds compared to the tens of thousands coming in.” And while he didn’t exactly leap to his wife’s immediate defence on the show, that alone is a shocking display of bias by anyone’s standards.
With migrant debates on the card almost daily, it simply doesn’t make sense for one of Britain’s biggest TV programmes to have the home secretary’s husband involved in the conversation.
The result is almost daily accusations of bias from GMB viewers, and a growing irritation with the programme itself.
Surely there is some way to avoid this. The most obvious seems like having a different presenting line-up on the days Cooper is scheduled to appear – though with the short notice and fast-moving waters of politics, this may not always be possible.
So, ITV, it’s time to grow some Balls and sack Ed off for good – or condemn the programme to more bias accusations, Ofcom complaints and a slow, grinding decline.
Express.co.uk has contacted ITV for comment.
