Ed Balls distances himself from Ed Balls Day by refusing to tweet 'Ed Balls'
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.Today marks three years since Ed Balls accidentally tweeted his wonderfully plosive name on his Twitter page, but for the MP it seems the incident's inherent hilarity may have worn off.
Last year, Mr Balls manually retweeted the post, writing: "Ok, ok.. Because it would be rude not to..!" [sic] but all that's sitting top of his Twitter feed this morning is a message about a British Royal Legion parade and a bit of borked code.
Britain has celebrated undeterred this morning however, rampantly tweeting the words 'Ed' and 'Balls' and Photoshopping him into Oscars selfies.
UPDATE: While he stopped short of tweeting 'Ed Balls', Ed Balls has now referenced Ed Balls Day in a funny-road-name tweet: 'Greetings and a Happy Day to you all from the top of the 141 bus, now crossing (where else?) the Balls Pond Road...'
John Prescott was in the market for a few more followers too, piggybacking the day by tweeting each individual letter of the Shadow Chancellor's name.
Balls' original tweet has now been retweeted more than 25,000 times, with Nick Clegg earlier in the year using it to signal that he was now on better terms with the politician.
It comes with a suitably juicy and thorough backstory, having come into existence in 2011 when Balls was shopping in a Castleford branch of Asda for the ingredients of a 12-hour pulled pork recipe.
An aide purportedly suggested he search for an article about him on Twitter, and after accidentally tweeting the search term he was not aware it could be deleted.
We'd like to think he was merely making an exploratory search for any and all Ed Balls-related news while absent-mindedly pushing a trolley down the herb aisle however.
There is still time for Ed Balls to get in on Ed Balls Day, with the original tweet having come at 4.20pm.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments