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The cadet branch of the “Miliband of brothers”, Gordon Brown’s former policy adviser, Ed Miliband, has been rarely more than a step or two behind his elder brother David.
And the gap is closing. He was four years behind, in age and in parliamentary experience, when he entered the House of Commons in 2005; and four years behind when he joined the Government as a junior Minister at the Cabinet Office a year later.
The gap had reduced to two years when he entered the Cabinet at the age of thirty-eight as Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change.
And in May 2010 he was only three days behind his brother in putting himself forward to succeed Gordon Brown as Leader of the Labour Party.
Preciously seen as the Brownite member of the family in contrast to the Blairite David, he started his campaign strongly critical of the Government in which he had served and the Party whose manifesto he had written.
Soon seen as the main challenger to his brother, he secured the support of fifty-seven MPs and the leadership of three biggest unions, Unite, Unison and the GMB.
He said Labour has lost touch with the values that had made it a progressive force and with the people it was meant to represent, and had lost trust over the Iraq war and MPs’ expenses. He also concentrated his fire on The Liberal Democrats and especially Nick Clegg.
He said he could unite the Party after its Blairite/Brownite divisions and win back the voters it had lost. He promised a civilised and fraternal contest, saying his brother was “his best friend in the world.” But the truce seemed to wear thin by August when his supporters accused David of being patronising towards him.
Five years earlier, a strong contrast to his ex-miner predecessor in Doncaster North, he had completed a powerful Brownite trio of ministers with safe seats in Yorkshire, with Ed Balls in Normanton and his wife Yvette Cooper in Pontefract and Castleford, all of whom prospered even more under Gordon Brown’s leadership.
Born on Christmas Eve in 1969, he is the younger son of the late Marxist intellectual and writer Ralph Miliband, who fled to Britain to escape from the Nazis in 1940. His grandfather was a Jewish refugee from Poland. He read philosophy, politics and economics at Corpus Christi College, Oxford and went on to take an MSc the London School of Economics.
He was briefly researcher and speechwriter to Harriet Harman before moving the Gordon Brown’s office in Opposition in 1994. Three years later he was at the heart of the Government as Brown’s special adviser at the Treasury, where he was described as one of the most powerful unelected people in the country. He held that job until 2002 when he went on a two-year sabbatical to the United States to teach economics at Harvard University.
He returned to become chair of the Council of Economic Advisers at the Treasury for a year before his election. At Brown’s insistence he was appointed to the Party’s 2005 election strategy committee along with Ed Balls.
In an eloquent maiden speech recalling his refugee parents he called for investment in social and economic infrastructure in his constituency, especially transport, schools and youth services. In his brief spell on the back benches he spoke on childcare and the future of the coal industry.
He is tall, dark and lives with barrister Justine Thornton, who gave birth to a son in 2009. As Energy Secretary he earned a rebuke during a chat on the Mumsnet website after admitting that they used disposable nappies.
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