The Rest Is Politics: Leading - 135. Ed Miliband: Blair, Brown, and Battling his Brother (Part 1)

Episode Date: May 25, 2025

How did Ed Miliband’s childhood being raised by survivors of the Holocaust shape his politics? How did his role mediating between Blair and Brown earn Ed the moniker ‘Emissary from planet F***’? What was it like to take on his own brother in the Labour leadership race? Sign up to Revolut Business today via: https://get.revolut.com/z4lF/leading, and add money to your account to get a £200 welcome bonus. This offer’s only available until 7th July 2025 and other T&Cs apply. To get an exclusive 60% off an annual Incogni plan, go to ⁠Incogni.com/leading ⁠ TRIP Plus: Become a member of The Rest Is Politics Plus to support the podcast, receive our exclusive newsletter, enjoy ad-free listening to both TRIP and Leading, benefit from discount book prices on titles mentioned on the pod, join our Discord chatroom, and receive early access to live show tickets and Question Time episodes. Just head to therestispolitics.com to sign up, or start a free trial today on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/therestispolitics. Instagram: @restispolitics  Twitter: @RestIsPolitics  Email: [e-mail] Social Producer: Harry Balden Video Editor: Adam Thornton Assistant Producer: Alice Horrell Producer: Nicole Maslen Senior Producer: Dom Johnson Head of Content: Tom Whiter Exec Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Feature availability varies by plan. Fees and teas and fees apply. Whatever stage your business is at. With Revolut business, you're ready for what's next. Welcome to the rest of politics leading with me, Rory Stewart. And me, Alice Campbell. And we're with Ed Miliband. And I'm delighted to say we're going to be with Ed Miliband for some time.

We're going to do two parts. and the first part essentially will be his life growing up in a very, very political family, then his career through politics, his relationship with his brother, which became somewhat Shakespearean at a certain point in their lives, when they both fought for the leadership of the Labour Party, his experience as a cabinet minister and then as leader of the Labour Party. And that's going to be the first part. And then the second part, how he recovered from defeat,

his decision to stay in politics and now with one of the most significant jobs in the cabinet under Kyr-Stama as Secretary of State for Climate, Energy Security and Net Zero. So there's an awful lot to talk about. Thank you for being here. That's pleasure. Well, done on your podcast. Well, you used to present the UK's number one political podcast for a while. I used to be a podcaster and Alistair used to say to Fiona, why does Ed go on about his zething podcast all the time?

Can I get the bottom of Alice as saying he's known you for a long time? Because we have this kind of vision of you with Tony Benn helping you with your homework and all these sort of grand figures knowing you when you were a child. He didn't know you when you were that young, right? No. But Ed and I were both there together kind of around the start of New Labour. Ed very much identified as Gordon's man and me very much as Tony's man. But Ed, we'll come on to that.

We'll come on to that. Let's start, though, with your childhood. You've got two very, very, very interesting parents. So just tell us a little bit about them, their background, and the influence they had you and David. Yes, so both my parents were Jewish refugees. My dad born in Belgium, left in 1940 with his father just before the Nazis arrived, walked from Brussels to Ostend and took a boat to Britain.

And how old was he then? 16. So he was born in 1924. My mum, Jewish refugee from Poland, who was in hiding in Poland during the war, after the war, lost her father in a concentration camp. It's such a defining part of who I think both David and I are. And it's such an extraordinary life that they, an upbringing that they had and such a dislocated and traumatic. time. We didn't talk about it much growing up. It's got so many different implications, the trauma, I think also the belief in human goodness, because my mother only survived the war because of a

lady who took in my grandma, my mum, and my aunt. In England. In Oro, in Walsall. It was really this family, the Sikovsky family, and the son, as he then was, who was, who was sort of 14, 15 at the time and was part of the resistance, just very recently died. He was an amazing guy who I'd met, and again, I took my family to meet him. But, you know, it was the heroism of people like that that meant that my mum survived the war. Your father came then to Britain when he was 16. Yeah. What did that mean in terms of his relationship to Britain? Did he speak completely fluent English from straight from before he was 16?

Did he learn it when he was there? I think he learned it really when he came. I think he must have had some English but he learned it with him. He arrived as Adolf. His mother in her infinite lack of wisdom decided to call him Adolf in 1924 and his

landlady in Britain said you can't be called Adolf. You can have to change your name to Ralph. So he was from then on Ralph. He went to night school he learnt English, he then joined the Royal Navy and was actually at the Normandy Landings. He was what they call the chief petty officer,

so he was the person trying to translate the German communication. And he spoke French and German as well? I think he must have spoken German, so that's how he was able to do that, yeah. I think he always had an incredible sort of gratitude, I think, for the fact that, you know, Britain took him in and eventually, you know, and his father, and then he obviously settled here.

And he always talked very glowingly about his time in the Royal Navy and the sort of camaraderie of it and sort of what it meant. The other Rory in my life says that my finest moment on television was when I went out to attack the Daily Mail after they called your dad the man who hated Britain. What was that all like when your... So your dad was a Marxist and he became one of the leading

Marxist intellectuals. I remember David, your brother, telling me the story about he used to go and salute Karl Marxist's grave at Highgate Cemetery. Did he ever take a little... I'm not sure a salute. Well, salute as in pay tribute. He didn't like the grave, actually.

No, he thought it was awful, actually. Too big? Two sort of garish and... Yeah, he wasn't. his thing. I mean, he is himself buried in Highgate Cemetery, but it wasn't, you know, that wasn't his thing, really. But when you were growing up, yeah, and as, as Rory said, you grew up in a very political household, you know, Joe Slover from the aparthe, anti-partite movement was popping in and Tony Benn. Did you always have a sense of politics being the most important

thing in life? Yeah. I think, I think politics is almost too narrow way of putting it. I I think, look, for them, you hear a lot from people today, politics doesn't make any difference. For them, it made, you know, it turned their life upside down. It killed my mother's father, my grandfather. It killed many members of my dad and mom's family. So I think that really what happened was that they felt lucky and sort of blessed that they had survived. And I think that then gave them a sense of you have a duty to try and make the world a better place, to use the time you've got to try and make the world a better place.

So I think it wasn't sort of Das Capital for breakfast, but it was more sort of lunch. It was just more a sense of a sort of responsibility to the world. And also their community was these extraordinary people about, you know, you mentioned Ruth Furb. and Joe Slovo, Bruce First was an anti-apartheid activist who was killed by the South African government. I met her just some months before she was killed. She was killed in a letter, bombed sent to Mozambique. And, you know, this was their community of people. And so it was sort of infused in the bloodstream in a way.

I think just to sort of put on the record clearly, your politics is very different from your father's. and your father was somebody who had a deep affection for Britain and, as you say, served in the Royal Navy. But I wonder whether it's possible to step back from that mad sort of slander in the daily mail to you reflecting a little bit on his politics rather than yours. And what that was like for him coming out of the Second World War because he clearly, and it's a theme we keep returning to in the podcast. some people came out at the end of the Second World, particularly kind of liberal Americans thinking that the solution was liberal democracy, capitalism, rules-based international order and all the stuff that we talked about from 1989 onwards. Your father drew a different conclusion from his experience to war and what he thought a just society could be. Can we focus on that while absolutely accepting that's not your politics, but I'd be interested in how he saw the world. I think it's interesting because it's complicated because sort of my.

Marxist in a way, for him, Marxism was an analysis of society rather than a prescription. It was an analysis of society based on class and class division. He used to describe it as a tool to think about society. And if you think about sort of communism as it was practiced, he was very skeptical about it. He was never a member of the Communist Party. But his vision was a sort of, you know, vision based on large-scale public ownership, a much more egalitarian society. And so it was in a sort of Marxist tradition, but it's, you know, he was a member of the Labour Party at one point.

Ian Mikado, some people will, listeners all know, a big figure in the Labour Party was very close to him, I think, in the 50s. And then he got fed up with the Labour Party. and, you know, so yearned for a very different society, and he tried to give expression to that. And I suppose, again, for contemporary listeners, you and your brother David are very much associated with New Labour, which for some people on the Tony Benn side of the Labour Party was quite a kind of radical departure.

Did you feel a sort of tension or an issue in departing from your father's vision of politics towards a sort of more social democratic vision of politics? Yes, I think the sort of distinction I would draw, and this was a distinction that he was quite open to, I think, which is, you know, the pragmatic practice of what you can actually achieve in your own generation, in your own lifetime, in the actually existing messy world of politics versus more utopian visions of what you can actually. the good society might look like. And I'm not saying, well, he would have just, he was a supporter of New Labour. I mean, he died shortly, he died sort of around the time that John Smith died, so he didn't see New Labor, but he wouldn't have been a supporter of New Labor. But he wasn't one of these people who thought, well, I'll just have my utopian visions that I'm not going to

knock on doors for the Labour Party. I don't care what happens in a general election. I remember he could be incredibly depressed when the Tories won in 1992, to the last general. election he saw. So definitely there's a sort of parting of ways in some senses, but he was very tolerant of people who were trying in the difficulties of actually existing politics to try and sort of bend the curve of what happened. It was quite old when you were born, wasn't he? He was in well-ed-dict 40s. Hard, it's hard having old parents. And you were 24 when he died. Yeah. And so he's long past. And he's, he's long past. And he's, you know, And now your mother's Marion still with us, but she's not well.

We all know people with Alzheimer's. But when you're sort of living the life that you're living, and, you know, David spends an long time in the States, just tell us a little bit about what that's like and how you've dealt with that. I mean, look, I think my dad's death was an unbelievably traumatic experience for me. I don't think I realized it at the time that 24 was, you know, young for him to die. But it felt like he'd had this heart attack in the early 1970s, which obviously

I had when I was really, really young, didn't really aware, it wasn't really aware of. And, you know, I always had a sense, I suppose, in the back of my mind of his mortality. I think he did too. And then he had this heart bypassed in 1991, which he was, he nearly died a number of times afterwards. and it was all and but you know it was a sort of I mean it's like the worst thing that's happened to me in my life and it's like 30 years ago so it feels like such a long time ago but you know he was such a kind of load star such a sort of presence uh this would be you know it's just unbelievably hard

look my mum is still alive she's 90 she's unfortunately got very bad Alzheimer's I still see her lot. She lives nearby. It's really hard. I'm really grateful for every day with her, though. It's interesting. I mean, my experience of her Alzheimer's is incredibly sad, but even beneath it all, she's still got some of her old personality, which I really value. I'm still just talking to Justine about this at the weekend, actually, and just saying how much I valued her still being here, despite everything. So both you and David went to the same college in Oxford.

Both studied PPE. And what's the gap between you in age? Four and a half years. And you're the only two children. And just very quick for you to come back to honestly. It seems from the service quite dutiful that you would have thought that you might rebel against this rather kind of earnest political.

One of you at least might rebel and go and do something else instead of which. I mean, was it, it's a sort of very interesting. It's like... Maybe new Labour was the rebellion. No, I don't think so. I think I think it's a tribute to my parents that

they were very they treated us this has its downsides, but they treated us as sort of adults when it came to sort of engaging in politics, having views being an 11 year old, 12 year old, 13 year old, it wasn't like, oh, you're too young to understand that. And maybe

that today that would be not not so out of place, but maybe back then it was still different. And was David a good older brother? Yeah, he looked after me, including at school. We went to Haverstock Comprehensive. He looked out for me. Sort of had its rough moments. Back then?

Yeah. Well, we'll come on to the rough moments later on. Yeah, yeah. So you then, your first proper job, in quotes, was basically with Harriet Harmon. My first proper job was actually working at a, at a telemarking. television program called A Week in Pollardis. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. And we did an interview with Harriet Armand, which didn't go so well for her.

And I sort of got to meet her kind of through that interview. And then she was looking for somebody to come and work for her. And then Gordon basically poached you. Yes. We were in the same building in Seven Millbank. And while I was there, actually, I had this sort of moment when I was sort of thinking, do I really want a career in politics? I went off to do a what's called a mini-pupilage,

which is to go and think about being a barrister for a week. And on the fourth day of this mini-pupilage, I walked into this at lunchtime. We went into an Indian restaurant that people were going to, and there was an evening standard on the table, and it said, John Smith dead. And it was the day that John Smith had died. And I suddenly said, excuse me, I've got to go.

And I never went back. So you went to her. back to hire it and I was like, okay, well, and then obviously the whole leadership thing transpired, but eventually then I went to work for Gordon a few months later. Right. So I had dinner with Gordon last week and I was really struck by the kind of, the sort of strange kind of craggy charisma of the man and the strange energy. How would you describe it, Alistair?

I delete strange. Just the craggy charisma. I mean, he's a real presence, a kind of great, you know, I was sitting next and don't a great kind of brooding, focused presence with a real views on the world, real vision with the world. What drew you to him? What did you see in this great kind of bearer of a man? Look, I think it was an extraordinary political apprenticeship working for Gordon and Tony. I think the people who were around Gordon and Tony had the most amazing political training. And what did I learn from Gordon that intellect and ideas really matter in politics?

You know, that it isn't just about some superficial headline. You've got to really think the issues through at a very deep fundamental level. He's a very deep thinker, first of all. Secondly, a sort of sense of political strategy. You know, I don't know anyone who can think through 15 moves ahead in the way that he can. And thirdly, his absolute dogged, dogged deterred. determination. You know, he will do the extra meeting, the extra phone call, you know, oh, it's not possible. There's no point in saying that to Gordon. He's like, well, what do you mean it's not possible?

Of course it's possible. Whether that's a local issue that he campaigns on today in Fife or an international, you know, financial architecture issue. And, you know, we might talk about what became known as the TBGBs, but looking back on it, they were like, two extraordinary figures to have in a government. And what was Blair like? I think somebody said about him he tripped the light fantastic. You know, he had an extraordinary charisma. Again, an ability to think sort of strategically. Different politics.

Different politics than me, different politics than Gordon. How different do you think, really? I always thought that was exaggerated a bit. And certainly on this podcast, we never hear about any difference. Their presentation is not true. Tell us what the difference. The way I think of it is that there were two wings of the aeroplane of the 1997 to, well, 2007, 2010 government. And tell us to wind up how to what the difference between the two wings is.

Where was John Prescott? Gordon was the social justice, child poverty, investment redistribution wing. That's not to say that Tony didn't care about those things. and I think Tony was more the sort of, you know, the public service reform, you know, constitutional reform, Europe wing. But that doesn't say that Gordon didn't care about those things or Tony didn't care about the things that Gordon cared about, but their emphasis was different. I'm trying to put this as sort of fairly and objectively as I can.

Yeah, yeah. Do you think back in 94, though, that we picked the right leader? Oh God. I mean, sure. I mean, you won three elections. And Gordon, when you talk about Gordon's determination and doggedness, do you think there was ever a time when the TBGBs really did become much more about personalities and ambition?

You and I had absolute front-row seats of this. We were both members of the so-called group of death. Why was it called that? I think it was called... It was after some world-cutting. It was because Scotland, Douglas and I, Douglas-Alazano, by both Scotland supporters. Scotland always got the group of death.

We decided to label our meetings the group of death. That was you, Douglas, Ed Balls, me and Philip, and occasionally Tony and Gordon. But most of the time, everything, people did work on really well together.

And actually, one of the best things is that even though you and I or me and Ed Balls would have fallouts, but basically we worked together. But what do you think it was in the end that made the TBGB such a difficult thing to...

Partly personality and partly politics. Look, you're to the left of Tony. No question about it. You were at the time. Fiona certainly is. You were... And you are. We went on this...

There was this one famous moment when Alice knows what I'm going to say. We went on this away day to an advertising agency. What was the advertising agency? TBWA, I think. TBWA. And it was a sort of... It was 2001-ish.

and we sort of, it was all a sort of what does the government stand for? And there was one big flaw in this plan, which is everybody went, including Gordon. It was the two teams. It was sort of partly a bonding exercise and partly a where is the government going exercise. The only person who didn't go was Tony. And there was some awkwardness to it was we all had to sort of sit around in a circle and describe our favourite holiday as a child. And Gordon had to do that and all of that.

And it was like, oh my God, this is like, I want to crawl under the table here. But we all came out with an incredibly progressive. much more sort of radical view of what the government should stand for. Tony then concluded that the government had been taken over by the Marxists. And that this was the sort of massive project. You remember this is a fair reading, isn't it? I think I know. I mean, we then had to have a sort of regrouping of this group with Tony involved in it

where we all sort of got sort of wound back and sort of changed and all that. So what was the slogan? What sort of slogans were you generating that? I don't think it was so much slogan. It was sort of... Creative focus on. Fairness and quality. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I remember Tony after he was calling me a Peter Hyland and say, you know, have you lunatics completely taken over with asylum now? And of course, you then became... I think it was Bob Schrum, the American speech writer who somehow got blamed, or Stan Greenberg, who somehow got blamed for this sort of, this whole thing. But I thought it was a really, it was really interesting because it took out the people from both for camps, if you like, and said, look, what is this?

government still with the majority of 167 or whatever it was, what is it really in power to do? And what it revealed is that without Tony Blair in the room, you're all a bunch of lefties. More lefty, yeah, including him. That was the reason where we were all asked to, if we could describe the campaign as a person, who do we, who do we choose? And you were like, sort of Nelson Mandela. I was Jeff Stelling. And you don't even know Jeff Stey. Jeff Sully was the Sky Sports commentator.

And they all said, who's Jeff Staling? He said, he's this amazing guy. Data, detail, strategy, big picture. But that is interesting. Mike, just for a second. My entire experience is he perpetually mocking me for the fact that I don't know who people are Jeff Staling is,

but he's just revealed that nobody else in the room had any other who Jeff's selling what's either. So his presentation of himself as being representing 99.9% humanity you know about this stuff, and turns out you don't know this stuff either. He's a presentation of himself is always wildly. He's a bit white.

A bit mad. What about, how do you remind our listeners and viewers how you became known as the, as the emistry from Planet Fuck. Do you remember that one? That's because I was the person who tried to, and look, I think this is sort of what I hope I try and do is sort of try and be somebody who sees different points of view. I mean, I tried to be somebody who helped try and bridge the TBJ. Well, you, you coined the phrase, so I don't know. Can you explain, though, the language? You were an emistry from which. Planet fuck. Why was it called, why does the planet have that name? Well, your memory of this is... My memory is that Ed was the...

We decided that Ed was the only member of the team who at the time did not tell us to fuck off every time. Every time we met. That may be slightly. But certainly, he became known as the emistry from Planet. You didn't mind, though, did you? No, I thought it was a compliment. The bridge builder.

It was a compliment. So after the second election win, you were around with Gordon as a... But then you went off. There's only so much time you can do these jobs without burning out. But were you already thinking about becoming an MP? I wasn't really sure, to be honest, whether I wanted to or not. And I think partly going to Harvard and teaching for a bit and doing other things was, look, do I really want to stick at this?

And what made you answer yes? It's sort of in my blood. And, you know, I cared about, I remember, say to my dad when I was 18, 19, 20. I can't remember. But Dad, you know, I'm not going to be an academic. I don't, I don't, it's not really what drives me, what drives me is politics. And that wasn't at that point being a politician. And him saying, that's okay.

Look, that's obviously fine. And was he a frustrated politician? Would he have liked to be an MP? People used to see him speak and say, you should be a Labour politician and so on. I don't think he was. I think he wouldn't have wanted to do it. The Labour Party wasn't the vehicle for him, as he sort of discovered. And being an academic was what drove him, I think.

And in terms of, so obviously, you can present these two very dutiful children following these very earnest parents into left-wing politics. You can also, as Alistair points out, see maybe elements of rebellion. You're going more new labour and him being a Marxist. And potentially also cite rebellion. against your brother who seems more Blairite and you're more brown-eyed. I mean, did you find that you began to develop a politics that was a little bit different to your brothers and that that was an important part of you becoming an independent human being?

I think I always had a slightly different politics. I mean, look, I don't want to exaggerate the differences between us. I was always more sceptical about New Labour, which may be in a way, this conversation we just had about the away day, the sort of fabled away day, I felt that skepticism. This was a massive opportunity to change the country. We were a deeply unequal country. Were we doing enough?

Were we striving hard enough to make those changes that needed to be made? And that's what I felt throughout the time. And that is, by the way, you know, that's as much about Gordon, because Gordon was obviously the chancellor as it is, you know, about Tony. That isn't to say I don't celebrate the great achievements. of the government, but I felt there was more we could do. Give us examples. What are opportunities looking back, you think actually we might have been able to do that? We didn't tackle inequality. Inequality basically stayed more or less

the same. Now, I was very involved in the tax credits thing, which was a massive redistributive thing, which was Gordon's signature policy and lifted kids out of poverty and was an absolutely great thing that we did. But the country remained incredibly unequal. The labor market remained incredibly, in my view, still quite exploitative. I think some of the problems we still see today hark back to some of that. And what were the policy solutions, those things that could have been pushed ahead between 97 and 2010 that were missed? I think, look, just for example, a greater role for trade unions, I think we were pretty cautious on labor market reform. Taxation at the top. Taxation at the top was sort of verboten, really, until the end, until

after the financial crisis. We did redistribution of the proceeds of growth, which is really, really important, but we shied away from taxing more at the top. Let's take a break now, because we're getting right into the guts of your sort of career as a politician rather than as an advisor and as a young man. So let's take a quick break and we'll come back to your political career. Hey, this is Michael and Hannah from Gollhangers. The Rest is Science. This episode is brought to you by Cancer Research UK. We often think of beating cancer as treatment, but imagine stopping it before it begins.

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For more information about cancer research UK, their research breakthroughs and how you can support them, visit cancer research UK.org forward slash the rest is science. Hi everybody, it's Dominic Samaruk here from The Rest is History. Now, some of you may have heard me on your show, The Rest is Politics, when Rory was away and I was filling in and enjoying Alistair Campbell's tremendous banter. And I'm back to tell you about our new series on The Restis History, which is all about Britain in the 1970s, a period with a lot of uncanny resemblances to our own. So right now we're living through a moment when oil shocks generated by war in the Middle East

are rippling through the world economy, when Britain feels like it's sunk in a bit of a malaise. People are arguing about Europe. The government has got a few issues with the trade unions. And we have a kind of, I suppose you'd say governing elite, a kind of political class that is really struggling to come to terms with all of these issues. And people are asking if Britain is governable at all. So there are a lot of parallels between that Britain that I'm describing, which is our Britain, and the Britain of the mid-1970s. So in this series that's coming out on the rest is history,

we'll be looking at these and other issues. We'll be talking about the rise of Margaret Thatcher, obviously a colossal figure in our political life even now, whether you love her or loathe her. We'll be talking about the very first Brexit referendum of 1975, a subject that I'm sure Rory and Alistair will have strong opinions about. We'll be talking about the fall of the Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson and we'll be talking about one of the grimmest moments in Britain's economic history, the moment in 1976 when we had to go cap in hand, as people said at the time, to the International Monetary Fund, the IMF, for a then record bailout. Now, if that sounds good to you, how could it not sound good to you? Of course it sounds good to you. We have a clip for you to listen

to at the end of this episode. And if you want to hear more, just search for the rest. is history wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back to the rest of the point. It's leading with me, Alistair Campbell. And with me, Rory Stewart. So, Doncaster, you become MP in Doncaster. Just to give, I mean, how did that happen? You got a safe seat.

David got a safe seat. Pat McFadden got a safe seat. And you're not actually from Doncaster, right? I'm not. No. You didn't spend part of your childhood in Leeds, didn't you? Yeah, yeah. I grew up.

I became a Lease United fan, a bit lapsed and very lapsed. But you also spent part of your life in these states. I did. I did, definitely. And that's sort of an important part of, you know, me. When you came back. So I came back in 2004 to Gordon, a bit on sufferance, if I'm honest. Gordon wanted you back.

Yeah, and I was very thinking partly just, it's just, you know, the jobs as an advisor, I'm sure my advisors are going to be listening to this and thinking, yeah, too right, mate. You know, these jobs are absolutely draining of your life. I mean, you know, it was in the days of landlines, but basically, Justin and I talk about this a lot. I used to have to unplug my phone on a Saturday night because I knew that Gordon would be ringing potentially at 7am on Sunday morning. And then when he wouldn't answer, he would ring.

Then he would ring people that he knew never switched their phone off, such as yours truly to say, have you held from Ed, where's Ed? Can't find it. Please call Gordon urgent. Please call Gordon very urgent. I mean, the poor pager people, you know, was these pages that we used to have to communicate. And it's just like, I just, anyway, so I came back.

And then getting a seat was. Yeah, it was really interesting because, look, what happened was that I was not sure that I wanted what I wanted to do. Gordon was incredibly encouraging, you know, to give him full credit. He was incredibly encouraging to me going for a seat. Rosie Winterton, my dear friend, was the MP in Doncaster Central, said, look, Doncaster North, Kevin Hughes, sadly the existing MP had got ill. And I said, well, I'm not from Doncaster. And the deputy mayor of Doncaster is going for the seat.

And no way, I'm going to get this seat. And she said, well, I think it's more open. I think they might want somebody different, you know, try it. So eventually I did try it. And, you know, I had an extraordinary sort of, I think it was three or four weeks going to meet every party member or as many. party members as I could saying, look, I remember the first conversation I really properly had was the guy who said, look, you're not from here. I don't want you as the MP. And I said, well, look, I'm not from here, but let me explain to you what I think I wanted, what I hope I can do as the

MP. And, but, you know, after 45 minutes of the conversation, he said, well, I'm, okay, I'll meet you. And I thought win or lose that selection. I thought it's been just an amazing experience. And just talking to people about their hopes for the, you know, what had Labor done well, what hadn't it done well, how did the country need to change, all of those things. Anyway, and then I got selected. One of the things that you then did is you went on to the backbenchers for a very, very short period. I mean, tell us, were you really on the backbenchers?

You actually secretly in number 10 all the time and actually in the central government, So you never really experienced what it's like to be. No, I was a backbencher. You're a proper backbencher. Yeah, yeah. And look, there's really sort of important sort of training and we'll make concrete this. But 20 years, I've been 20 years now as the MP for Doncaster North, incredibly important to me. It teaches me every day so much about politics, about government, about what we're doing right, what we're not doing right, you know.

Let's look then at the, so you come in in in 2000. And I guess one of the themes is that as this remarkable growth happened in Britain from the late 80s into the 90s, there was a big deepening inequality between London and southeast and the rest of the country. I mean, I can, you know, we'll get on to what Cameron screwed up. But what do you think in retrospect from 97 to 2010 could have been done to make sure we didn't end up with this enormous regional inequality? I think it's sort of saying what could have been done is obviously complicated question, but I think there's no question that the growth was too unbalanced, too based on financial services, and eventually, obviously, as we saw with the crash, left us too exposed. And look, I think the great thing about the government was that we use, as I said earlier,

the proceeds of growth to invest in public services, and they got better in places like Doncaster, significantly better. What we didn't do was change the fundamental sort of insecurity of the economy and the sense of precariousness that people felt. And for a constituency like mine, a former mining constituency, whatever the deep challenges and difficulties of those coal mining jobs, they offered security, a decent pension, a sense of community. And my sense becoming the MP was, those jobs have gone and they've not been replaced. Now, I'm not saying even back then we could go back to lots of coal mining jobs, but that sense of where are the good jobs that offer, and just think about unions, stability, not being about to be fired, not zero

hours contracts, all of those things. And I think that's, you know, that's at the heart of the thing we didn't address. I'm not saying it's easy, but that's the heart of it, I think. Looking at the recent local elections, do you worry for your seat? Look, I think reform are a threat, yeah. I think reform are a threat across the country. I had this conversation in the public last Friday night with this guy and he was, you know, and the conversation went like this. It went through the boats, the NHS, and then it went to, I think, the deepest part of this,

which is he said, you know, he said, I feel that we've had governments, different parties, Labour and Tory, life is so hard for me. How can you answer that question? And I explained how we are trying to answer that question. He said, for me, that's the test. I didn't vote in 2024. I think he voted reform in the local elections. But it was like, you know, he saw, I wrote this book after my period when I lost the election called Go Big. And for me, he epitomized the point of Go Big, which is he was saying, look, you know, whether it's ability to afford a house, make ends meet, the cost of living, the public services, I feel like life is so hard. And you're not, you guys aren't addressing that.

Back in your, your rise through the Labour Party, what I'm hearing and what I heard at the time was you sent, because I think a lot of people found it difficult to understand how you ended up challenging David for the leadership because there was this sense that actually for the public perception. We challenged each other, yeah. Yeah, okay. Good point, fair point. There was a conventional wisdom,

as there had been with Gordon and Tony, before John Smith died. There'd been a conventional wisdom that Gordon was probably going to be the next leader. Tony emerged. There was a conventional wisdom, I think, that David was probably going to be the next leader.

And the reason why there might not be a contest because there was equally a bit of a conventional wisdom that you were very close politically. But actually what you've been saying, what you said to Roy earlier, that maybe there was a bigger difference between you than even people who knew you well were aware of. I mean, I don't want to characterize him because that's unfair, but what I felt was we needed a significant moving on from new Labour. I felt I had something distinctive to say in that leadership

election. And look, what I always felt was, you know, it's wrong to say that personal ambition isn't an issue for all politicians, but you can't just do this because you want to be leader of the Labor Party. Do you have something distinctive to say about the Labor Party and about the country? And I felt I did have something distinctive to say, and that's why I ran. And what would David's a response to that, having, when you said that to him? Well, I mean, you had to know, you had to tell us, Kim. What at the time? Yeah. Yeah. What would he have said if you'd said that to him, said, you know, I've got a distinctive issue of the Labour Party. That's why. Well, we did have that conversation, but obviously,

look, you know, it goes without, well, it's obvious thing to say that the two of us, the two of us, standing against each other, you know, created massive tension and issues. I mean, obviously it did, you know. And that's partly about being brothers. Of course. Well, he is about it. I mean, I don't have a brother. That's what it is about.

I mean, that is absolutely what it's about. And it was a really hard decision. And I totally understand why some people would think they wouldn't have made that decision. How was your mum with it? I mean, she did not feel in any way it was her role. to say one of you shouldn't stand. I can remember my mum came to a fundraiser that I did with you in Doncaster.

I remember my mum saying, oh, I don't know how you could ever take your brother on like that. That was a kind of, I mean, it felt quite Shakespearean the whole thing. I just wonder what it would like, how did it feel at the centre of it? What was going through your mind as to the, obviously the political consequences? It was really hard.

It was really hard. and it was really hard for him and it was going to be really hard for whoever didn't win which obviously most people thought was going to be me wasn't going to win I actually thought I was going to win but you know it turned out to be right just

but it was the hardest decision I've ever made I just felt I thought I owed it to myself to say look this is what you believe this is a distinctive position about the country, these moments don't come along, only I really ever come

along once. If that's what you, if you have a distinctive thing to say, you should go out and make your case and probably, you know, maybe you won't win and that that will be, that will be fine. I do think your characterization, though, is interesting. You know, you said, you challenge David. Well, you know, we both stood. Yeah.

I guess what I meant by that is that six months before, I wouldn't have seen that coming. I thought, you know, David is probably going to be the next leader. That's what I meant by that. Yeah. It's the emotional arc. So you become leader. And I remember that period. I was in Parliament when you became leader.

And there, I guess, must have been a moment of sort of, I don't know, tell us about it. It was a moment of anxiety maybe taking over, a moment of optimism. when things were going well. It's an incredibly hard job. It's just an unbelievably hard job. I think it's a particularly hard. Look, it's a hard job all the time. I remember Tony saying to me after I lost,

well, one thing I can say to choose, you're never going to do as difficult a job ever again. It's sort of, you know, nothing prepares you for it because it was such a narrow victory, because lots of people, Alastr included, was so disappointed that David had lost, it made it even harder. I still helped you. You did, absolutely.

And 100%. I know 100%. And I think there's really massive credit to you and Gordon. You know, so it's hard. I tried to build bridges because I thought that's the only way this thing can potentially work. Obviously, I hope David would stick around and be in the shadow cabinet. I totally respect that choice he made, which he didn't want to do that. Or he wasn't sure he definitely didn't want to be in at the beginning and then decided he wanted to leave.

Did you think when you got the job as the leader of the O Party, do you think you, in your heart, did you feel I am going to win the next election? Yeah, I thought the election was winnable, definitely. And there were sort of moments of up and moments of down in that period, loss of downs. But I still thought I could win. And in fact, you know, what was sort of quite kind of galling, I think it was a different from, say, Hayg, is that right up to the last day, including on the day of the election, it looked like the polls were sort of heading in our direction. I remember saying to Justine on the day of the election, I think, I think it looks like we're not going to win. Now, I hadn't sort of allowed myself to do lots of measuring the curtains of thinking, oh, we're going to be in Downing Street and so on and so forth, because I didn't sort of partly want to tempt fate. But I thought it was a winnable election.

One thing I was wondering about is that in order to motivate yourself, but also in terms of your profound beliefs about the world, you will have strongly felt that David Cameron and George Osborne were taking the country in the wrong direction. You probably will have felt that actually they had significant flaws in terms of their analysis, in terms maybe of even who they were as people. And so there was an enormous,

amount at stake. Yeah. Who you were as a person compared to who Cameron was. Where you wanted the country to go compared to where he wanted. And of course, you will have felt quite understandably. You were right about these things intellectually, morally. So that must make the defeat that much more devastating. Because in a sense, the British people have chosen that thing, which you really don't like at all,

and which you've been telling them is the wrong path. Yeah. I'm just on, be to the two parts. I really thought Cameron's and Osborne's ideas were completely wrong. Austerity. I just thought one thing I'd say, and this isn't meant to sound sort of politics and clubby, was I always thought to myself, because you said something about personally, I always thought it was quite important not to get into the personal, particularly with David Cameron,

sort of personally hating him. I thought Gordon and he had sort of developed this relationship. where they sort of really despised each other. And I thought, actually, well, partly because there were some things you needed to cooperate on, but also just because I just thought, I don't know, it's what clouds your judgment. Do you know what I mean? He was my political opponent. And I still have a sort of slightly odd.

I don't really go out lots of the time and criticise him in public. He's obviously not in active now in frontline politics. But I don't know. It's sort of a kind of, that's your psychology thing. Don't sort of hate your opponents because it clouds your judgment. Would you feel differently about Liz Truss and Boris Johnson? Did you find it as easy to think, well, they're all fine. I don't have anything personal against them.

It's not they're all fine because their ideas are horrible. And I really dislike David Cameron's ideas. I just think it's more just a psychology thing. But it's not that you found Cameron easier to relate to Boris Johnson. No, not not not particularly. It's also you've got to, it's partly you've got to sort of think to yourself, okay, to what extent is this person onto something? and with the public, and how do I respond to that?

If you just take Johnson, there's lots of things I really hate about Johnson and the way he did his politics. He had an optimism about the country. He tried to express an optimism about the country, and he was good at big narrative, which is worth learning from. You can always learn from your political opponents, is sort of what I think. Now, Ed, as you know, we had several hundred. possibly even thousands of conversations during your five years of leadership.

And fair to say, in many of them, I've made the same point. I made the same point again and defend the record. Correct. Go on, Alistair. Give us your defend the record. Give us that analysis, House. It's worth your idea. My analysis was that I thought Ed had a lot of qualities and a lot of good ideas

and there was a really clear sense of what he wanted to do. But I felt that given that the Tories were trashing our record, the media were trashing our record, if the Labour Party wasn't defending our record, that would ultimately become a disadvantage to Ed when he went into the election. And I still believe that. I still believe that. And it always said, I didn't have, I don't have the bandwidth in terms of how much people are going to listen to me.

If I get bang on about the past, bang on about your record, then I'm essentially wasting my time. I mean, I'm paraphrasing a very long conversation. So my response to this, Rory, you can be an adjudicator. My response to this is I'm really proud of lots of the things the Labour government did, but I think when the public throws you out, if the next person who comes along tries to defend the people that got thrown, sort of in the generality, in the limited bandwidth, you get heard by the public to say, oh, well, actually, you threw us out, but actually we were really good. You don't have a chance of winning.

And that somehow, however good the government was, implicit in this or explicit as a matter of strategy, is you have to show you're moving on from the past. So you thought actually maybe that Alice was just too attached to the achievements of new labour. And actually, if he'd been thinking more clearly as a strategic communications person, he would have realised that if he put himself aside, it wasn't smart politics. I mean, if you want to put it that way, Rory, then. I think you're both very unfair and limited. Let me put the other way around because, I mean, Alison, obviously, this is a kind of big theme with him.

So he would also say that if we look today, he's very troubled by some of the language around immigration. And one of the arguments he'd make there is that you're basically playing to your opponent's strengths. You're reinforcing their narrative. And that that's part of the – presumably you would say that's part of the risk of what he was doing. Yeah, I think the point I made, if Cameron is basically saying don't go back to Labor, What was their line? Don't give the keys back to the people who crash the car. If we're sort of accepting the narrative that actually we did kind of crash the car, that's a big problem.

And I think it's one of the reasons that... No, Alistair, but the way I think about this is such an interesting thing is that the big problem was that the global financial crisis happened on our watch. Now, I don't think it's fair to say that it was the Labour government that was responsible for that. But the truth is that when those kind of things happen with all the implications it has, and, you know, we were part of a more deregulatory position. And, okay, Cameron was calling for even more deregulation or blah, blah, blah. People are going to hold you responsible. Yeah, but at this plate, you saying earlier that you wanted to take the parties to the left,

part of the argument I think you could have made is actually that, you know, Gordon's role in bailing out the crisis and the crisis having been caused by greedy right-wing bastards in America that you took. to Osborne and Cameron identify with way more than me. That's not a defending the record position. That's a whole different strategic. That's a whole different strategic argument. It's part of the same political strategy that I wanted you to do.

I mean, it's a, in a way you've shown, I mean, maybe that would have been a better strategy, but that isn't a defending the record strategy. But look, I'm not saying, I mean, God knows, I did lots and lots of things wrong as leader. My view, and maybe it just speaks to what Alistair said, is that I wasn't bold enough and clear enough about my agenda for the country. That's kind of way what took me.

to the book. You know, and that in a way I was too hemmed... I was actually, I actually felt contrary to Alistair, I was too hemmed in by the past. I was too trying to build a bridge to, like, what Labour had done. I wasn't just clear enough about saying, the past is the past, this is my vision. So is, and is that possibly something about you

that actually you maybe concluded that you were never going to be able to be just a sort of jolly Boris Johnson optimist, nor were you going to be able to be a kind of smooth Cameron centrist that actually you needed to lean into your more intellectual side, your more radical side and be yourself more. I think the more radical side, yes. Look at what happened subsequently. You had Brexit in 2016. You had Corbyn's unexpected coming close in the election of 2017. How much more percent of the vote did he get than you? Quite a lot more. I mean, he took it from sort of 30-something percent up to 40-something. Yeah, massive jump.

You had Johnson in 2019. And look, this is the, in a way, if there's one big thing that should come out of this discussion on sort of substantively, it's that these things should tell us something, which is that so many people in our country and the rise of reform are deeply unhappy with the way this country is run and has been run for a very long time. and they feel it is not serving them well. They are struggling. They are working harder for longer for less. I think it's the Florida Clinton originally used. And they are saying the system is not working for us. And that is in a way the big exam question of British politics.

And I think to answer your question directly, Rory, I don't think I, I think I knew in the back of my mind. Well, no, I knew in the front of my mind that was the exam question because that was a lot of what my analysis was. But I felt this as a leader, and I would say this to my team, does the prescription add up to an answer to that big analysis of the state of the country? Well, Ed, thank you for setting the exam question. We'll try and maybe get you to answer it in part two, where we're going to talk about recovering from election defeat, why you decide to stay in politics and some of the big challenges you've got now in your current job. If you can't wait to hear that episode, it is available right now to Trip Plus members. Just go to the restisopology.com to sign up. You'll get that episode as well as ad-free listening bonus episodes with deep dives on policy, as well as a member-only newsletter with book discounts and more.

If not, we'll see you with Edmilla Band next week. Goodbye. Looking forward to it. See you soon.