85 Facts About Ed Miliband

Edward Samuel Miliband was born on 24 December 1969 and is a British politician serving as Shadow Secretary of State for Climate Change and Net Zero since 2021.

Ed Miliband has been the Member of Parliament for Doncaster North since 2005.

Ed Miliband was Leader of the Labour Party and Leader of the Opposition between 2010 and 2015.

Alongside his brother, Foreign Secretary David Ed Miliband, he served in the Cabinet from 2007 to 2010 under Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

Ed Miliband was born in the Fitzrovia district of Central London to Polish Jewish immigrants Marion Kozak and Ralph Ed Miliband, a Marxist intellectual and native of Brussels who fled Belgium during World War II.

Ed Miliband graduated from Corpus Christi College, Oxford and later from the London School of Economics.

Ed Miliband became first a television journalist, then a Labour Party researcher and a visiting scholar at Harvard University, before rising to become one of Chancellor Gordon Brown's confidants and chairman of HM Treasury's Council of Economic Advisers.

Ed Miliband was elected to the House of Commons in 2005 and Prime Minister Tony Blair made him Minister for the Third Sector in May 2006.

Ed Miliband was promoted to the new post of Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, a position he held from 2008 to 2010.

Ed Miliband abolished the electoral college system to elect the leader and deputy leader of the Labour Party, and replaced it with a "one member, one vote" system in 2014.

Ed Miliband led his party into several elections, including the 2014 European Parliament election.

Ed Miliband was succeeded after a leadership election by Jeremy Corbyn.

Ed Miliband became Shadow Secretary of State for Climate Change and Net Zero in the November 2021 British shadow cabinet reshuffle.

Ed Miliband's mother, Marion Kozak, a human rights campaigner and early CND member, is a Polish Jew who survived the Holocaust thanks to being protected by Catholic Poles.

Ed Miliband's father, Ralph Miliband, was a Belgian-born Polish Jewish Marxist academic whose father fled with him to England during the Second World War.

Ralph Ed Miliband left his academic post at the London School of Economics in 1972 to take up a chair at the University of Leeds as a Professor of Politics.

Ed Miliband's family moved to Leeds with him in 1973; Miliband attended Featherbank Infant School in Horsforth between 1974 and 1977, during which time he became a fan of Leeds United.

Ed Miliband remembered his time in the US as some of his happiest, during which he became a fan of American culture, watching Dallas and following the Boston Red Sox and the New England Patriots.

Between 1978 and 1981, Ed Miliband attended Primrose Hill Primary School, near Primrose Hill, in Camden and then from 1981 to 1989, Haverstock Comprehensive School in Chalk Farm.

Ed Miliband learned to play the violin while at school, and as a teenager, he reviewed films and plays on LBC Radio's Young London programme as one of its fortnightly "Three O'Clock Reviewers".

Ed Miliband went on to graduate from the London School of Economics with a Master of Science in Economics.

In 1992, after graduating from the University of Oxford, Ed Miliband began his working career in the media as a researcher to co-presenter Andrew Rawnsley in the Channel 4 show A Week in Politics.

In 1994, when Harriet Harman was moved by the newly elected Labour Leader Tony Blair to become Shadow Secretary of State for Employment, Ed Miliband stayed on in the Shadow Treasury team and was promoted to work for Shadow Chancellor Gordon Brown.

In 1995, with encouragement from Gordon Brown, Ed Miliband took time out from his job to study at the London School of Economics, where he obtained a master's degree in Economics.

On 25 July 2002, it was announced that Ed Miliband would take a 12-month unpaid sabbatical from HM Treasury to be a visiting scholar at the Center for European Studies of Harvard University for two semesters.

In early 2005, Ed Miliband resigned his advisory role to HM Treasury to stand for election.

Ed Miliband applied for selection to be the candidate in the safe Labour seat and won, beating off a close challenge from Michael Dugher, then a SPAD to Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon.

On 28 June 2007, the day after Gordon Brown became Prime Minister, Ed Miliband was sworn of the Privy Council and appointed Minister for the Cabinet Office and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, being promoted to the cabinet.

Ed Miliband was additionally given the task of drafting Labour's manifesto for the 2010 general election.

On 3 October 2008, Ed Miliband was promoted to become Secretary of State for the newly created Department of Energy and Climate Change in a cabinet reshuffle.

In March 2009, while Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, Ed Miliband attended the UK premiere of climate change film The Age of Stupid, where he was ambushed by actor Pete Postlethwaite, who threatened to return his OBE and vote for any party other than Labour if the Kingsnorth coal-fired power station were to be given the go-ahead by the government.

Ed Miliband accused China of deliberately foiling attempts at a binding agreement; China explicitly denied this, accusing British politicians of engaging in a "political scheme".

Ed Miliband launched his campaign during a speech given at a Fabian Society conference and was nominated by 62 fellow Labour MPs.

On becoming Leader of the Labour Party on 25 September 2010, Ed Miliband became Leader of the Opposition.

Ed Miliband spoke at a large "March for the Alternative" rally held in London on 26 March 2011 to protest against cuts to public spending, though he was criticised by some for comparing it to the anti-apartheid and American civil rights movements.

In July 2011, following the revelation that the News of the World had paid private investigators to hack into the phones of Milly Dowler, as well as the families of murder victims and deceased servicemen, Ed Miliband called for News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks to resign, urged David Cameron to establish a public, judge-led inquiry into the scandal, and announced that he would force a Commons vote on whether to block the News International bid for a controlling stake in BSkyB.

Ed Miliband said Labour did not do enough to tackle moral problems during its 13 years in office.

In December 2011 Ed Miliband appointed Tim Livesey, a former adviser to the Archbishop of Canterbury, to be his full-time chief of staff.

Ed Miliband said he would tackle "vested interests", citing energy and rail companies.

Cameron refused, saying it was a matter for the RBS board, leading Ed Miliband to announce that Labour would force a Commons vote on whether or not the government should block it.

Hester announced that he would forego his bonus, and Ed Miliband said Labour would carry on with a Commons vote regardless, focusing instead on the bonuses of other RBS executives.

On 14 July 2012, Ed Miliband became the first Leader of the Labour Party to attend and address the Durham Miners' Gala in 23 years.

On 23 January 2013, Ed Miliband stated that he was against holding a referendum on the UK's membership of the European Union because of the economic uncertainty that it would create.

On 18 March 2013, Ed Miliband reached a deal with both Cameron and Nick Clegg on new press regulation laws following the Leveson Inquiry, which he said "satisfied the demands of protection for victims and freedom of the press".

At the Labour conference in September 2013, Ed Miliband highlighted his party's stance on the NHS and announced if elected Labour would abolish the bedroom tax.

Ed Miliband committed to increase funding for border checks, tackle exploitation and the undercutting of wages, require employers who recruit abroad to create apprenticeships, and ensure workers in public-facing roles have minimum standards of English.

Ed Miliband campaigned in the Scottish independence referendum with the cross-party Better Together campaign, supporting Scotland's membership of the United Kingdom.

Ed Miliband made an unplanned visit to Lanarkshire to draw a contrast between a Labour and Conservative future for Scotland within the UK.

The first election to the Shadow Cabinet that took place under Ed Miliband's leadership was on 7 October 2010.

On 24 June 2011, it was reported that Ed Miliband was seeking to change the decades-old rule that Labour's Shadow Cabinet would be elected every two years, instead wanting to adopt a system where he alone had the authority to select its members.

Ed Miliband later confirmed the story, claiming that the rule represented "a legacy of Labour's past in opposition".

On 4 July 2013, Ed Miliband effectively sacked Tom Watson from the Shadow Cabinet after allegations of corruption over the selection of a parliamentary candidate for Falkirk.

On 7 October 2013, Ed Miliband reshuffled his Shadow Cabinet for the third time, saying that this would be the last reshuffle before the general election.

Ed Miliband conducted a final mini-reshuffle ahead of the 2015 general election in November 2014, when Jim Murphy resigned as Shadow International Development Secretary to become Leader of the Scottish Labour Party.

Ed Miliband said that following the poor showings in Scotland "lessons must still be learnt".

Ed Miliband launched Labour's campaign for the 2012 local elections with a speech in Birmingham, accusing the coalition government of "betrayal", and claiming that it "lacked the values" that Britain needed.

Ed Miliband said that Labour would introduce more strenuous laws relating to pay-day lenders and betting shops.

In May 2014, Ed Miliband led Labour through the European Parliament elections, where the party increased its number of Members of the European Parliament from 13 to 20.

On 30 March 2015, the Parliament of the United Kingdom dissolved and a general election was called for 7 May Ed Miliband began his campaign by launching a "manifesto for business", stating that only by voting Labour would the UK's position within the European Union be secure.

Ed Miliband subsequently unveiled five pledges at a rally in Birmingham which would form the focus of a future Labour government, specifically identifying policies on deficit reduction, living standards, the NHS, immigration controls and tuition fees.

Ed Miliband later admitted that he was "clearly wrong" to call for Corbyn's resignation.

In September 2016, Ed Miliband joined the editorial board of The Political Quarterly journal, an unremunerated role.

Ed Miliband held his seat at the 2019 general election with an extremely reduced majority.

Ed Miliband assumed the role of Shadow Business Secretary in the new cabinet.

In September 2020, Ed Miliband faced Prime Minister Boris Johnson during a debate on the UK Internal Market Bill, in a speech accusing him of "legislative hooliganism".

On 27 October 2021, Ed Miliband took Prime Minister's Questions after the October 2021 budget on behalf of Keir Starmer, who had contracted COVID-19.

Ed Miliband described himself as a new type of Labour politician, looking to move beyond the divisiveness of Blairism and Brownism, and calling for an end to the "factionalism and psychodramas" of Labour's past.

Ed Miliband repeatedly spoke of the need for a "new politics".

Ed Miliband backed UK military action and intervention in Afghanistan and Libya respectively.

Ed Miliband called for "responsible capitalism" when Google's Eric Schmidt commented on his corporation's non-payment of tax.

Ed Miliband worked closely with the think tank Policy Network on the concept of predistribution as a means to tackle what he described as 'the growing crisis in living standards'.

Ed Miliband endorsed the Blue Labour trend in the Labour Party, founded by Maurice Glasman.

In June 2014, while speaking to the Labour Friends of Israel, Ed Miliband stated that if he became Prime Minister he would seek "closer ties" with Israel and opposed the boycott of Israeli goods, saying that he would "resolutely oppose the isolation of Israel" and that nobody in the Labour Party should question Israel's right to exist.

Ed Miliband stated that, as a Jew and a friend of Israel, he must criticise Israel when necessary, opposing the "killing of innocent Palestinian civilians".

On 30 April 2019, Ed Miliband joined Caroline Lucas and Laura Sandys in calling for a Green New Deal in the UK.

Ed Miliband shared platforms during the campaign with former Liberal Democrat Leaders Lord Ashdown and Charles Kennedy, Liberal Democrat Deputy Leader Simon Hughes, the Green Party Leader Caroline Lucas and Business Secretary Vince Cable, among others.

Ed Miliband noted that, although he disagreed with a few of her policies, he respected "what her death means to the many, many people who admired her".

Ed Miliband said that Thatcher "broke the mould" in everything she had achieved in her life, and that she had had the ability to "overcome every obstacle in her path".

Ed Miliband had previously praised Thatcher shortly before the Labour Party Conference in September 2012 for creating an "era of aspiration" in the 1980s.

Ed Miliband has previously spoken positively of his brother David, praising his record as Foreign Secretary, and saying that "his door was always open" following David's decision not to stand for the Shadow Cabinet in 2010.

Ed Miliband has spoken positively of his two immediate predecessors as Labour leader, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, praising their leadership and records in government.

Ed Miliband was portrayed during Labour's 2015 election campaign as being genuine in his desire to improve the lives of working people and to display progression from New Labour, but was unable to defeat interpretations of him as being ineffectual, or even cartoonish in nature.

Political illustrators perceived a resemblance to Wallace of the British animation Wallace and Gromit and greatly exaggerated this in caricatures; various images circulated in the press and online media of Ed Miliband performing day-to-day activities such as eating a bacon sandwich, donating money to a beggar, and giving a kiss to his wife, all while displaying apparently awkward facial expressions.

Ed Miliband is married to Justine Thornton, a High Court Judge.

In June 2017, Ed Miliband guest-presented Jeremy Vine's BBC Radio 2 show.