Ed Balls quizzes Home Secretary wife Yvette Cooper over rioting across Britain

Ed Balls said he had “genuine questions” for his wife, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, as he interviewed her on live television having barely seen her “in the last week.”

The Good Morning Britain host quizzed Ms Cooper on the scenes of violent disorder around the country in the wake of the killing of three young girls in Southport.

Former Labour chancellor Balls told his co-host Kate Garraway: “I have not really seen her at all in the last week.

“When these events happen, and if you’re the Prime Minister or the Home Secretary, it becomes pretty much 24 hours a day, seven days a week, so it’s tough.”

When Garraway replied: “So you  have genuine questions you need answers to?” he said: “Absolutely.”

After Garraway kicked off the interview, Balls said: “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 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?”

Balls also questioned Cooper on whether there has been a “two-tier approach” to policing, and if police have been “softer and more cautious” when policing the Gaza demonstrations, compared to a “tougher” approach over the last week.

Cooper replied that police have to operate “without fear or favour, whatever the kinds of crimes it is that they face”.

Balls and Cooper have been married for more than 25 years, and have three children together.

Balls was a Labour MP from 2005 to 2015. He became a TV personality after competing in Strictly Come Dancing in 2016.