Little bit of confusion yesterday when Guido misheard that Ed Balls went to Eton for an education, it wasn’t a scoop, The Times had it a year ago and it was Draperishly innacurate – as Balls tweets this morning.  Eric Pickles consequently made the same muddle on Today this morning (Eric is an avid Guido reader and this blog is one of his favourites).  So Guido will take this opportunity to clarify the facts on behalf of Ed Balls for chums and co-conspirators:

Ed’s father taught at Eton.  Nowadays Ed modestly boasts he went to a state comprehensive in Eton, which in truth he did briefly for one term.  His alma mater however is the exclusive private fee-paying (£10,000+ a year) Nottingham High School, founded in 1513.  The school’s motto ‘Lauda Finem’ means ‘praise to the end’, which perhaps explains Ed’s view of himself.  From there he went to Oxford’s Keble College, just like his father before him.  At Oxford he, like many other public schoolboys, joined the Oxford University Conservative Association.  He also joined a notorious exclusively all-male drinking club known as the “Steamers”.

Here is a picture of Ed enjoying himself at an initiation ceremony wearing full Nazi uniform staring at the crotch of a mooning fellow member of the “Steamers”:

The japes these public school boys get up to, eh?  After Oxford (where he first met Balliol girl Yvette) he went to George W Bush’s alma mater, Harvard.  It is not known if he joined the Skull and Bones club…