Ed Balls

After 50 years: where next for VAT?

What is the appropriate act to mark the fiftieth anniversary of Value Added Tax in the UK? Are we celebrating? Surely not. Are we mourning? If only. But we should at least pause and reflect on the central role that VAT has played in our recent economic history.  The third largest source of tax revenue,

With Ed Balls

18 min listen

Ed Balls is an acclaimed broadcaster, writer, economist, professor and former politician who served as shadow chancellor from 2011 to 2015. On the podcast, he tells Lara and Liv about the importance of Sunday lunches growing up, his long history of making bespoke children’s birthday cakes and the times he turned his campaign team into

Ed Balls’ Christmas Day starter recipe

Cooking the Christmas dinner is my job in our house. And I love it. All those courses and juggling of logistics. The annual realisation that our oven is too small to cope with the scale of my ambitions. Ladling goose fat from the pan. And a family meal which — just once a year —

No child left behind

The Conservatives think that education is about selecting the lucky few, says Ed Balls. But there is no reason why excellence and opportunity shouldn’t be for all It’s just over a year since David Willetts made his thoughtful but ultimately fatal pronouncement: ‘academic selection entrenches advantage, it does not spread it’. Those nine words —