• Ed Balls is the husband of Yvette Cooper, the current Foreign Secretary.
• ITV's Good Morning Britain (GMB) reaches 5.5 million viewers weekly and over a million followers on X.com (Twitter)
• The show's political content has the ability to significantly influence public opinion and should not have the husband of a Labour Secretary of State as a presenter.

ITV must remove Ed Balls as a presenter on its morning show Good Morning Britain.

There has been a significant number of complaints about Ed Balls' presence on GMB. Balls is perceived by many to be biased in favour of the Labour Party and his wife's political interests.

Democracy is not served well when one of the most watched daily political TV shows is hosted by the spouse of a very senior politician in the ruling party. And of course Ed Balls was a very senior Labour politician himself (he was Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer from 2011-2015).

When GMB interviews politicians, they all face a certain amount of critical questioning, but when Ed Balls questions non-Labour figures the methods change. The tone is aggressive and he seeks not simply to challenge, but to delegitimise. Even if his methods were more subtle, his position should be understood as untenable simply because of his closeness to the centre of political power in the UK.

Allowing party political bias of this kind has to stop. ITV, get rid of Ed Balls!

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Additional facts:

• Ed Balls has been married to Yvette Cooper since 1998.
• Balls was a Special Adviser to former Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
• As Labour Shadow Chancellor, Ed Balls advocated for  austerity policies.