ITV‘s Good Morning Britain has been hit with more than 8,000 Ofcom complaints after Ed Balls interviewed his wife, the Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, live on TV.
The former Labour MP and ex-shadow chancellor, 57, questioned Ms Cooper on ITV’s Good Morning Britain about the violent protests in some parts of the UK in the wake of the killing of three young girls in Southport.
The episode was branded ’embarrassing to the extreme’ by viewers concerned with the huge conflict of interest’.
On Wednesday Ofcom said the Monday programme attracted 8,201 complaints about Balls questioning Ms Cooper, and an exchange with Coventry South MP Zarah Sultana.
The submissions refer to the period from July 30 to August 5.
Balls clashed with a Labour MP about the violent far-right earlier in the episode.
Balls asked Ms Cooper whether officers had policed protests by far-right activists and pro-Palestine demonstrators differently.
Ed interviewed Home Secretary Yvette alongside Kate Garraway, 57, who made her triumphant return to GMB following her father’s illness
Good Morning Britain was branded ’embarrassing to the extreme’ by viewers after Ed Balls, 57, interviewed his wife Yvette Cooper, 55, in a ‘huge conflict of interests’ on Monday’s episode
The former Strictly Come Dancing contestant asked if there had been a ‘two-tier approach’ to policing, and if police have been ‘softer and more cautious’ when policing the Gaza demonstrations, compared with a ‘tougher’ approach over the last week.
Ms Cooper, who has been married to Balls for more than 25 years and has three children with him, said that police have to operate ‘without fear or favour, whatever the kinds of crimes it is that they face’.
Before the interview, which was led mostly by GMB host Kate Garraway, he said he had ‘genuine questions’ for Ms Cooper, as he has ‘rarely seen her at all in the last week’ because of the disorder on the streets.
Earlier in the episode, Zara Sultana, MP for Coventry South, accused host Balls of ‘sneering contempt’ after a discussion about whether the riots should be deemed Islamophobic became heated.
Defending her view that the riots were a result of racism and Islamophobia, hosts Kate and Ed repeatedly asked the 30-year-old MP to answer their questions.
Hitting back Ms Sultana said she was going to wait for Garraway to finish her question before Balls interrupted: ‘If you want to answer the questions, you can but you don’t have to.’
Later, Ms Sultana posted on X: ‘The sneering contempt of ‘journalists’ will never stop me from calling out racism and Islamophobic hate’
Balls continued to interrupt her as she replied to Garraway’s question about why she wanted politicians to call out Islamophobia
Balls continued to interrupt her as she replied to Garraway’s question about why she wanted politicians to call out Islamophobia.
Ms Sultana then asked Balls ‘if she can finish’, and criticised an article that he wrote about immigration.
Balls, who was a Labour MP from 2005 to 2015, defended a 2010 Guardian opinion column titled ‘We were wrong to allow so many eastern Europeans into Britain’.
Later, Ms Sultana posted on X: ‘The sneering contempt of ‘journalists’ will never stop me from calling out racism and Islamophobic hate.’
Later on the programme, Garraway began her questioning of Ms Cooper by saying: ‘Can I ask, because we’ve talked about this a few times in the last few days, like many of our viewers will have done at home since those terrible killings in Southport, there have been identifiable individuals on social media who have been inciting not just riots, but violence.
‘They’ve been using racist language. They’ve been using falsehoods about what happened in Southport.
‘This is happening on the social media platforms. What can be done, what should be done now by the social media companies and the police and the Government to stop this happening, because it’s been happening for a week?’
ITV declined to comment.