ITV bosses are reportedly facing pressure to distance Good Morning Britain from presenter Ed Balls after he clashed repeatedly with Green Party leader Zack Polanski in a live interview that ended with Balls visibly incensed, Polanski sharing posts describing both hosts as “classroom bullies,” and producers reportedly telling colleagues that the former Labour shadow chancellor had “lost his cool.”
The row broke out on Monday’s broadcast of GMB, ten days before the May 7 local elections, when Polanski – who is the Green Party leader, the most popular opposition figure in the country, and is currently polling joint first nationally – called out the apparent conflict of interest in being interviewed by a former Labour minister who is married to the current Foreign Secretary.
How it started
The interview had begun as a standard pre-election grilling when Polanski chose to name what he considered the elephant in the room.
“Do you know what I’m enjoying?” he said, mid-interview. “The fact that a Labour politician who is married to a senior Labour minister is allowed to ask questions of the leader of the Green Party.”
Balls, 59, a former Labour MP and shadow chancellor who lost his parliamentary seat in 2015, took immediate exception. “Are you accusing me of being a Labour politician?” he demanded.
Polanski replied: “I’m accusing you… Well, it’s not even an accusation. We are planning to replace the Labour Party and take the fight to Reform.”
Balls cut in again: “Unfortunately Mr Polanski, I lost my seat in 2015 and I’ve not been a Labour politician for 10 years.” Polanski replied: “You might have been a Labour minister fairly recently, in the last 20 years.” Balls responded: “Luckily, you’re a Green politician, you are the party leader and you seem to be using a rather elaborate device of making accusations against me to avoid answering the questions.”
The pair continued to argue throughout the interview. Clips of Balls looking furious at the end of the session were widely shared across social media, with the exchange clocking up hundreds of thousands of views.
The hypocrisy argument Polanski made
One of the sharpest moments came when Balls attempted to turn Polanski’s argument back on him, pointing out that Susanna Reid had asked about something Polanski had said ten years ago – while Polanski was objecting to questions about Balls’ Labour role from sixteen years previously.
Polanski’s response was considered by many observers to be the more persuasive: “Two of those things are not the same. Someone pretending to be a journalist who’s interrogating the leader of a political party, having a very strong association with a Labour government who are currently in power, is very different to asking me about a story when I wasn’t a politician 13 years ago.”
Polanski also accused the programme of deploying “shock-jock tactics” ten days before a local election instead of asking about policy. “Your audience will notice that I’m talking about taxing multimillionaires and billionaires, taking wealth away from powerful people and putting it back in our communities, and GMB, 10 days before a local election, rather than asking me about our policies, wants to just do shock-jock tactics.”
The hypnotist question
Adding further tension to the interview, Susanna Reid had raised questions about Polanski’s previous career as a hypnotherapist – a line of questioning Polanski dismissed as irrelevant and an attempt to distract from policy discussion. He said the public feel political discourse has been “eroded” in part by media focusing on “gossip rather than the everyday issues impacting their lives.”
The aftermath – and the pressure on ITV
The backlash on social media was swift and largely unfavourable to Balls. Polanski reshared a post reading: “Ed Balls and Susanna Reid really did come across like a couple of classroom bullies this morning. They did an excellent job of proving Zack Polanski to be the only adult in the room.”
Sources speaking to The Sun said producers believe Balls “lost his cool” and that there is pressure behind the scenes to distance the programme from him. An insider said: “It’s an easy win for politicians on the show to give the impression Ed is being biased towards them because of who he’s married to. Ed knows this, but lost his cool yesterday. There have been whispers behind the scenes about how it makes the programme look, but that’s been going on since he interviewed his own wife. It’s clear there is growing pressure to distance Ed from the show but bosses keep backing him. They hope the backlash from yesterday calms down.”
The reference to his wife is significant. In 2024, Balls came under fire for interviewing Yvette Cooper – then Home Secretary, now Foreign Secretary – on GMB, a situation that prompted 16,000 complaints to Ofcom. ITV defended the interview at the time but said it would not be repeated.
A GMB spokesperson has since told publications that Balls “remains a valued member of our presenting team” and that any suggestions otherwise are “categorically untrue.”
The broader media bias question
Polanski’s intervention during the interview was not merely tactical. It reflects a genuine and longstanding question about the revolving door between politics and media commentary – specifically the phenomenon of former politicians being given presenting or commenting roles on mainstream television, where their institutional loyalties and personal connections can shade their questioning in ways that are difficult to see but real in effect.
Balls served as a Labour MP for a decade, as a secretary of state and as shadow chancellor. He is married to the current Foreign Secretary. He presents on a programme that interviewed the Green Party leader ten days before a major election. Whether that constitutes bias – or the appearance of bias – is a matter on which the 16,000 people who complained about the Cooper interview, and the many more who shared Monday’s clips approvingly, appear to have formed a view.
ITV has decided the relationship is worth defending. Whether the decision looks as straightforward after May 7 – when the Greens are expected to take major London councils and the public’s view of who won Monday’s interview has been widely registered online – may be a question ITV finds itself revisiting.
If you wanted to watch how an interview should be handled, the below with Sophie Ridge is worth your time..
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