Edward Michael Balls was born at the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital on February 25, 1967.
He went to Bawburgh Primary School, but his family moved to Nottingham when he was eight.
He got a first class honours degree in philosophy, politics and economics at Oxford University and an MPA in economics and politics at the John F Kennedy School of Government in Harvard.
He joined the Financial Times in 1990 as an economic leader writer until his appointment as an economic adviser to shadow chancellor Gordon Brown in 1994. He remained his adviser after Labour's general election victory in 1997, when Mr Brown become chancellor.
He was Labour MP for Normanton from 2005-10 and then the Morley and Outwood constituency from 2010 to 2015.
He held a number of cabinet and shadow cabinet positions for the Labour Party and is married to Yvette Cooper, the party's MP for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford.
Mr Balls is also famous for accidentally sending a tweet containing just his name in 2011. It has been retweeted more than 58,000 times and received more than 30,000 likes.
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