It looks like it is a busy day for Ed Balls, the man who aspires to be a chef, lunching today, according to EyeSpy.MP, with The Telegraph’s Deputy Editor Benedict Brogan at the Michelin-starred chef Michel Roux Junior’s Roux at Parliament Square. We’re all in this together, eh?

Rt Hon @EdBallsMP looking blinky and conspiratorial with @BenedictBrogan over salmon at Roux in Parliament Square

— Eye Spy MP (@eyespymp) June 20, 2013

Tonight Ed’s waistline takes another hit when he is the keynote speaker at the Co-operative Party Gala Dinner 2013 at the Hilton Victoria Hotel off Millbank. The evening will apparently “provide a unique opportunity to enjoy the company of some of the country’s leading co-operators and Co-operative Party members, supporters, workers, Councillors and Members of Parliament.”

The financial hub of this great co-operative movement is of course the Co-operative Bank, which was encouraged by the Labour government to take over the Britannia Building Society in 2009 because politically Labour wanted to expand the co-operative base. Ed Balls is a Co-op supported MP, his office gets bunged £50,000 a year from the Co-op. The Labour Party itself is literally in hock to the Co-operative Bank to the tune of £3.6 million on a low interest you scratch-my-back I’ll-scratch-yours terms deal. Tonight Ed Balls will sing for his supper as their after dinner speaker…

The Co-operative Bank is a financial disaster after the Labour government induced deal, the bank’s bonds have hit junk status, 7,000 end investors – typically pensioners – will be wiped out by the bond haircut that will be necessary to plug the black hole in the Co-op Bank’s finances. It smells bad. Ed Balls isn’t going to do himself any favours tonight if he is trying to rebuild his reputation for financial probity…

UPDATE: According to reports from the room tonight, Ed is still a keen Guido reader:
https://twitter.com/Markfergusonuk/status/347805580200660992