Ed Balls came to UEA to give a talk on 17th of May 2017. There was a book signing session afterwards. Of course I had my book signed. Overall he's a lovely person. It makes me miss the New Labour. The New Labour was brought down by a series of small mistakes, and a few big mistakes. Anyway, I remember three stories Ed Balls told us quite poignantly. I decided to write them down before I forget them.

So Ed Balls was with Gordon Brown in a Concorde flight back in 2002. The airplane suffered a compressor stall.
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Ed writes in his new book, called Speaking Out: “Gordon said ‘well, here we are’ and I said: ‘Yep, maybe this is it’.”
When the plane got to 24,000ft Gordon turned to Balls and said: ‘What do you think? Should we finish my speech?”, recounts Balls.
Fortunately the plane started falling, disaster was averted, and the speech was finished.
Radio Times ¹⁾

Apparently Ed Balls and Gordon Brown talked about their life in the decent, and Gordon Brown started blaming other people about things (current political crisis / why he wasn't the PM). More information can be found at ²⁾.