But The Mail on Sunday can reveal that figures are not the only area of interest for the Corporation’s economics editor Stephanie Flanders – she also has impeccable political contacts. For not only has the Oxford-educated journalist dated the new Labour leader Ed Miliband, but also the Shadow Home Secretary Ed Balls. Well connected: BBC economics editor Stephanie Flanders had relationships with both Ed Miliband and Ed Balls Miss Flanders, 42, was this weekend in Washington covering a meeting of the powerful International Monetary Fund and was unavailable to comment. But it is understood her relationships with the two most powerful men in the Labour party happened in the Nineties. Miss Flanders once confided in a newspaper interview that she met the Miliband brothers through ‘friends of friends’ after university, suggesting her relationship with the now-Labour leader pre-dated her relationship with Ed Balls. Details were not forthcoming from the Miliband camp last night, but both Miss Flanders and Mr Miliband, 40, were attempting to build careers in the media at around this time. Miss Flanders, now a mother of two, was returning from two years’ study in the US at Harvard University and attempting to find a job on a newspaper while working at the London Business School. Mr Miliband, meanwhile, was working as a researcher for a documentary production company –although he was soon to abandon that career for politics. The couple could also have shared many friends, including Miss Flanders’s tutorial partner at Oxford, Yvette Cooper, who later married Mr Balls and was this week appointed Shadow Foreign Secretary. is understood Stephanie Flanders relationships with the two most powerful men in the Labour party happened in the Nineties A year below her at university was James Purnell, later to become Work and Pensions Secretary. In fact, the revelations shed light on the extraordinary nexus between Miss Flanders, Miss Cooper, 41, and Mr Balls, 43, all of whom studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford before taking a Kennedy scholarship to Harvard, and Mr Miliband, also an Oxford PPE graduate, who then studied at Harvard. Whether Miss Flanders’s relationship with Mr Miliband lasted any length of time is unclear and neither have ever mentioned it openly. However, it seems clear the affair was in the early Nineties as, for the latter part of that decade, Mr Miliband was in a relationship with Liz Lloyd, who later worked for Tony Blair. A younger Miss Flanders on holiday in Tangier, Morocco Then in 2004 the Labour leader met barrister Justine Thornton, his current partner and mother of his son. It appears that Miss Flanders began her relationship with Mr Balls sometime after 1994 when she took a job as a leader writer at the Financial Times, where Mr Balls was also a journalist. Again, little is known about how long the relationship lasted, although a recent newspaper article by the journalist Sarah Sands referred to the affair and suggested neither Mr Balls nor Miss Flanders regretted their parting. Mr Balls also met Miss Cooper at the Financial Times and they married in 1998. Miss Flanders, whose career at the BBC recovered from the unfortunate coincidence of her daughter, Claudia, being born at the start of the economic crisis, lives happily with her long-term partner John Arlidge in a £1million home in West London, close to Television Centre. The daughter of British actor and comic singer Michael Flanders, she attended St Paul’s Girls’ School where fellow pupils were socialite and journalist Petronella Wyatt and BBC newsreader Sophie Raworth. She was made the BBC’s economics editor in February 2008. The BBC last night declined to comment, but senior executives are known to be worried that the revelations about the relationships will fuel concerns over Left-wing bias within the Corporation.How BBC's credit crunch ice queen Stephanie Flanders fell Ed over heels...
with Balls AND Miliband
Last updated at 11:39 PM on 9th October 2010
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1319222/How-Stephanie-Flanders-fell-Ed-heels--Balls-AND-Miliband.html#ixzz11vk27yXx
Sunday, 10 October 2010
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