The Rest Is Politics: Leading - 136. Ed Miliband: Farage, Starmer and The Fight for Net Zero (Part 2)

Episode Date: May 29, 2025

How did Ed Miliband recover from Labour’s 2015 defeat and decide to remain in politics? Can the Energy Secretary win the argument for Net Zero against the likes of Tony Blair and Nigel Farage? Is it possible to be in politics and be a good parent? 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. 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. To get an exclusive 60% off an annual Incogni plan, go to Incogni.com/leading Instagram: @restispolitics  Twitter: @RestIsPolitics  Email: [e-mail] Social Producer: Harry Balden Video Editor: Teo Ayodeji-Ansell  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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politics leading with me Rory Stewart and me Alastair Campbell and we're with Ed Miliband for part two we covered his early life and his early career and his leadership of the Labour Party last week

and we're now going to move on from that awful defeat in 2015. How did you get over that? I say we're going to move on. It's still work in progress. Is it working progress, is it?

Look, it's hard. No, I think I'm over it. Are you over it? Yeah, I am. But it's taken a long time. It's 10 years. Yeah, look, it's incredibly hard. I think I said last week that, you know, it looked right up to the end like we might,

I might win. So I wasn't fully prepared for it. And I think nothing can fully prepare you for the sort of transition from relevance to irrelevance. You go from thinking every move you make, every sandwich, eat, every breath you take is analyzed and nobody gives a hoot what you know, what you do. I'm asking this question in a way unfairly because I sort of know the answer, but did you struggle mentally, psychologically? Yeah, definitely. What's interesting is what happens in

these moments of adversity tells you a lot about yourself. So I remember I did one last duty as leader of the opposition on the Friday. It was a wartime anniversary. Got. home, special protection disappears back on my own. And I remember at that moment onwards, I was like, there's no way I'm giving up being an MP. I'm carrying on. Just because I'm not the leader of the Labour Party doesn't mean I can't have influence, can't have ideas. Never a doubt. Never a doubt. It wavered a bit over the coming of the following months, or maybe I should do something else. But fundamentally at my core, I was like, I'm 45 years old, I've still got something to contribute. And it's partly goes to my view about politics. And

What changes politics? Of course leaders change, countries change worlds, but movements also do and ideas do. And, you know, I wasn't there to be just, you know, I felt I was there for my ideas, not just for the position. And I still had my ideas. What made it so painful? What made it so mentally difficult? I suppose that I felt like everything had been leading up to this moment for at least five years and possibly more subconsciously. It'd been a massive strain on my family, my life. You'd been through the absolute rinser, you know, and you sort of absolutely career bang into a brick wall of defeat. And then you're like, well, what do I do now? Now, I had my role as a backbench MP in Doncaster, it's important, but it was like, well, you know, you've gone from this every inch of your day,

managed, so clear what your objective is. And purpose, you know, look, purpose is what. what's so important to us as human beings, and in some sense, I'd lost my purpose. And I suppose I didn't realize on day one, day two, how hard it was going to be, I think, to sort of find a way through, find a way forward. Did you have any inkling when you made that decision? I remember we spoke on the day, and I think I sort of said, I understand why you're doing it, but maybe isn't it worth just waiting to see the party settle down a bit?

Did you have any sense that Jeremy Corbyn might become the next leader? No. I don't think he was even a candidate at the time. What do you think that said, and how do you relate that to what you said in the first episode, about your own self of maybe not having been bold enough? Do you think he was capitalising on... Yes. I think the question of that leadership contest partly became,

do you want a more left-wing version of Ed, or do you want a more centrist version of Ed, and the party chose the former? And did you ever think about serving on the front bench under Jeremy Corby? Did that conversation ever arise? I got asked and I thought, no. And really, I saw Hague actually after I lost in 2015 because I thought he was a sort of useful counsellor.

He sort of said, carry on being the person you are because you'll find that people's attitude to you transforms. They'll say, where was that person before? And you'll think, you know, he had three lessons, three pieces of advice. Second piece of advice, make sure the next thing you do is a success. And thirdly, only go back into the shadow cabinet when you feel really ready and you think this is a person who's going to win and I really want to be sort of thing. And I think to be honest, I don't think whoever had been the leader I would have served in that period. I felt I needed some time just away from it all.

Podcasting. Podcasting. I've only seen this in the kind of smallest sense, but the kind of mini version of my life was running for leadership against Boris Johnson and losing to him and feeling that my whole vision. of Britain and Brexit had been screwed up. My whole traditional party had been screwed up. And it felt like a very kind of personal rejection of me, my ideas, my values. Did you feel that or not in losing an election? Yeah. It clearly was a rejection of me personally as well as my ideas. I think it's so interesting this. It says something about me as I'm quite an anxious person, but I tend to be anxious about the things that might happen rather than when they do happen.

The defeat was really painful, but my issue was more, well, what hell do I do now? I also had this experience. I'd be sort of on the street a couple of months afterwards, and a person I met a person on the street. They were like, I'm so sorry. And they started weeping on the street. And they were like, you know, when I saw that exit pole, I was just devastated. I ended up sort of hugging them saying, oh, they're there. It's okay.

And I was thinking to myself, oh, God, this is the wrong way around. But, you know, I think it was more, what am I going to do? I had an interesting conversation with your brother David. So when I left politics and I took over an American charity, he said to me, the key question where you have to ask yourself is not what are you doing this job, but what's next, what comes after that job? What does that then lead to? And I wonder whether you don't both share that and where that comes from, that sort of strange.

I mean, I haven't thought about it until now, but maybe a bit comes from our parents. Also, you know, bloody hell. I mean, losing an election is really bad and personally painful, but it's like nothing compared to what my parents went through. We talked in episode one about Ruth First and Joe Slovo, and I met one of their kids the other day just on the street with their children. And, you know, I think to myself, God, you know, I think politics is hard. Ruth was murdered.

And Joe was fighting apartheid and saw his wife murdered. I mean, you know, he's just too. banal to say, let's just get some perspective. But I mean, look, I think in a way, maybe one of the things that the upbringing I had, and David, too, taught us the sense of sort of resilience, really. And was William Hague right in his three pieces of advice? I think he was actually, uncannily right. The other thing is, we didn't, I didn't sort of reflect on this in episode one, but I said I should have been bolder in episode one, and that's true. I also think I was at the kind of crossover transition from 1990s on message.

I'm not slang of new labor here, but new labor politics to the yearning for much more authentic politics. And what I found after the election, I remember I did a tweet saying, just going down Hoban tube, and a man shouted, oh, my God, there's Nick Clegg. And I tweeted not exactly. And then all these people suddenly responded on Twitter and said, this guy's got a personality after all. That's actually quite funny. And, you know, lots of people would then say in the following years, where was that personality when you were leader of the Labour Party? And it was because I was just so, I felt too overburdened and, oh, my God, the Daily Mail is going to take one thing I say out of context. And so it made me much more of a constricted person than I actually think I, I mean, I sort of think I do have a somewhat of a personality.

No, you always are. But did that? Thank you very much. No, I commend your personality in your house. Likewise. But what did, you mentioned there The Daily Mail. One of your big moments as leader of the Labour Party was Leveson. Was Leverson.

Deciding, and again, I can remember long conversations we had about that, because it was you basically said, these people are out of control, they are bad for the country, I'm going to go through it. And it was one of my best, it was one of the moments when people actually saw I had something distinctive to say. Carbon Brief sent me an analysis recently said that you'd had four times more negative editorials. I can't remember the comparison. It was way more than you probably deserve, given the job that you're doing. I'm not saying it's not a very important job,

but you're not like the leader of the Labour Party anymore, or you're not managing the England football team which is really important jobs. So do you think you still pay a price for what you did, I don't know. I don't know. Look, I think some of these institutions don't like Net Zero and some of them don't like me, and maybe quite a lot of them don't like either.

So you don't feel any bitterness about the press? I think what I don't like is when people write sort of unfair things, which maybe happens quite a lot. But I sort of think what's the, you know, what are you going to do about it is the question, really, rather than feeling a sense of bitterness. Before you came in, Alastair was teasing me for what my face looks like. No, I wasn't. And he was suggesting in his normal, modest way. How outrageous.

I look a bit like Gollum and he looks for like James Bond. I didn't. I think people in glass would be. glass faces. I'm often accused in Twitter of looking weird. I'm like eating things weirdly. They've never said that about me, Rory. Right. And there's a suggestion that maybe, you know, my face,

and maybe if I can be so modest, or so your face is not quite exactly what they're looking for for central casting politics. What is that about? Have you ever reflected on that? But you were eating a sandwich and that was an issue, right? And why is it eating a sandwich an issue? Did you ever try to understand it?

Did you ever try to? Look, I just don't know. I mean, it's sort of, I, you know, you look weird. I think somebody in today program did a thing saying people think you're ugly or something. You know, it's just sort of. And it's sort of bullocks, really, though. I don't think I lost the elections of the sandwich. I think it's really, you know, people said that Neil lost the 1990,

Neil Kinnett took an election for the Sheffield. He didn't lose elections as a Sheffield. It's the sort of ex post facto thing. all he lost was of the sandwich. Wasn't Murdoch once reported to have said, we're not taking this guy serious enough, we're not attacking him enough. So some of the right-wing press

thought the sandwich is a way to have a go at him, portray him as weird, slightly odd, all the stuff. I mean... And why is that powerful in the contemporary era? Why is that such a sort of powerful meme on social media? Why do you think people want their politicians to look kind of classically,

James Bond? I don't think they do, actually. I sort of, maybe that's the sort of transition that we've sort of made. I'm not sure that is what matters. Johnson's a good example. Johnson is a good example. People think that so much of politics is bullshit,

and they want people who are just going to cut through the, you know, is true this. I mean, I don't know, I'd be interested in Alist's reflections on this. You know, being on message, being saying the right thing, not having a word out of place, the grid, the this, the this, the other. That was a very, I'm not saying it was wrong, but it was a very 90s sort of new Labor thing for totally understandable reasons. But I think in a way people have become much more wise to that.

Well, you say that about the Labour politicians that we've had on the podcast, don't you? They haven't, I mean, it's very weird. It doesn't look as though. A lot of the people we've interviewed have really learnt that lesson. Look, it's so hard, Roy, because you are thinking, am I going to get a word out of place? Am I going to be, you know, am I going to be produced for something I said? Well, even what you said at the end of part one about, have we got the vision, have we got this? You know, if you wanted to take that out of context, you can say, this isn't you talking about you, it's you talking about.

But what is it that you think allows... people like Andrew Rayner or Boris Johnson to somehow give the impression they don't really care about to be really colourful, entertaining interview subjects in a way that some of your colleagues in the cabinet are not. Well, I don't think it's fair. I'm not going to comment on my other colleagues in the cabinet, but I don't know, but I think it's important. And I think there's challenges because there's collective responsibility in politics and you've got to be careful and, you know, all of those things. But I think if there's one lesson I've learned is to try to be as much as possible who you are. as much as possible, show your real self. And then you sort of think, well, if people don't like my real self, well,

you know, that is what it is. All right, well, I'll quit break now and then come back and talk about your role, your current role, dealing with the future of the planet. It's something else here now, something new. From exclusively on Paramount Plus, it's the series Stephen King calls Scarious Hell. Everything here is impossible, but it's also real. Sci-fi vision calls it the best show streaming right now.

We're running out of time and we still don't know the rules. Don't miss what the movie blog calls something you need to watch. Saving those children is how we all go home. From Binge All Episodes exclusively on Paramount Plus. Hi everybody, it's Dominic Samark 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 rest

is 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're 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, 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 like that 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. You've known Keir for how long? Since I think about 2008, is when I first met him. I was introduced by a mutual friend. And first impressions? Incredibly decent, sort of incredible integrity in the law for the right reasons. in politics for the right reasons. And you've always been on the front bench in the climate role? I started off as this merged role of business. Basically, climate has been the thing. Let's, can we get into that a bit?

Of course. Because one of the things I'm really interested in on the politics of all this and populism and so forth is how well, how successfully the right, the populist right, have weaponised net zero. And I just wonder what your reflections were on that, whether you've got the right strategy for dealing with that or whether actually there is a sense that you're kind of on the back foot the whole time now. Absolutely not. We're not on the back foot and we're going to win the argument. So I'm in this odd position where I did the job before 2008, 2010 as climate change secretary. Under Gordon.

Under Gordon. Yeah. Introduced the Climate Change Act started by my brother, you know, steamed through by me, world leading act. So over the last five years, we've constructed a big argument around climate, which I think is the coalition building and the right argument, which is a climate argument and also an energy security argument and a jobs and growth argument. And I think what is really important is it's absolutely in Keir's DNA. Indeed, he said the other day it's in the DNA of the government. This is the route to secure energy, energy independence. This is the route to lower bills.

This is the route to the jobs of the future, and it's the route to doing the right thing for future generations. And it's a really important thing here, which is there is a right-wing ecosystem that wants to say net zero is terrible, and that's not where the public is. Talk to any of the pollsters, and they say the same thing, which is the attempt to create a successful culture war around net zero to undermine the government is not going to work because it's not where the public is. That isn't to say we don't need to be careful, and that's why allying the climate argument with the security and bills argument is so important, and the jobs argument is so important, but we absolutely can win it and are going to win this argument. I wonder if you can reflect, though, on the way in which we talk about it and why people feel anxious about it, because it can be seen as part of that whole story of the 90s and

2000s, that you could group it with international development spend, interventions, markets as being something where experts had a very clear consensus, everybody agreed, everybody was doing the right thing, all the parties converged, and somehow the public began to become a little bit alienated and anxious. What do you think made some people in the public feel of it actually. But the thing is, Roy, I will sort of answer your question, but just to be really careful on the premise here, because people are trying to persuade you of the premise that there is a big net zero backlash out there, and there just isn't the evidence for this.

Yes, there is a political party. Trump winning, drill, drill, Farage pushing net zero. Well, hang on me. The AFD. I mean, there's a lot of political entrepreneurs who sense this stuff. Well, hang on a minute. I mean, different things going on. I'm talking about Britain here.

Let's start with Britain. and my lesson which I would apply to Britain and apply elsewhere is if you say to people, in order to tackle the climate crisis, you, an ordinary person suffering from the cost of living crisis is going to have to pay thousands of pounds more, it's not going to work, right? But that's not our argument. And here's the two big things have changed as I was last climate change secretary. First, the situation has got far worse.

The emergency has got far worse. It's really important to say that. Ten hottest years since 2015. extreme weather events all around the world from Doncaster to California. But secondly, there's been this dramatic thing that has happened, which is the fall in the price of renewables. So it is now, they're now cheaper than fossil fuels, not just for Britain, but for two-thirds of the world. Solar wind, you know, solar costs down 90%. Wind cost down 60%. And Russia, Ukraine, showing our dependence on fossil fuels is what ruined family finances, business finances, and the

public finances. And so what's changed is you can ally the energy security bills argument, as well as the jobs opportunity with climate. Today and tomorrow. To be cheeky for a second, I would say that the way you're talking now is exactly the way Alistair would have wanted you to talk. You're defending the record. You're not conceding the criticisms of the opposition. I mean, one of the reasons it's so strong is that you're not tempted to say, well, you know, we got a lot wrong about the way we used to talk about climate change. There are lessons that we've learned and here's a new thing. You're saying absolutely. In fact, you were refusing to accept my premise that there was stuff that we got wrong.

Look, I think it's slightly different category of things. He's defending the present. Well, I'm defending the present and the future. The other thing is, we'll get onto TB and his intervention. Should we read out the messages you sent to me when TB intervened at the letter zero debate? I don't know. I'm not going to deny. I don't know.

Can I just explain this? And there'll be a lot of the two of you explaining he didn't quite mean it. But so. Tony Brear said, the Tony Blair Institute released a report called the climate paradox why we need to reset action on climate change. In the forward, Blair argued that voters are noticing the credibility gap between being asked to make financial sacrifices and changes in lifestyle whilst knowing that their impact on global emissions is minimal. Blair also believes that limits to fossil fuels in the short term are doomed to failure. Cue, he didn't quite

mean that it's been taken out of context and none of you disagree. with Tony Blair. Over to you. I'll check it against the text. Alastra and I had a spirited exchange on the day where we agreed actually. Although I then noticed on the podcast, you sort of said, I said it was a timing issue, which was an extremely sort of, you know, chicken shit way out, if I may say so. Look, basically said, what the F is he up to now? Yeah, okay.

The report itself, was he wrote forward to the report. The report itself is perfectly unobjectionable. That's what I said. In general. Well, he didn't quite. say that. He just said there was a timing problem. The report itself, what's disappointing about Tony's forward, and I have huge respect for Tony, is I think it's incredibly defeatist, which is not what Tony is. It's really defeatist.

What to say that fossil fuels? Well, it sort of says we're not going to succeed and, you know, we're not going to achieve 1.5 and that the whole thing is, it's all going badly. Let me just sort of give you some context to this, right? When I was climate change secretary, nobody mentioned the word net zero. I didn't know the term net zero because our ambition was for 80% reductions in emissions by 2050, right? Pre-Trump, but still a majority,

90% of the world was covered by net zero targets. Now it's something like, well, it's a majority of the world, right? I was looking back, because I'm an absolute bloody nerd, at a document you both won't be familiar with called the UNEP Emissions Gap Report. We did an emergency project.

Right, in 2010. Actually, preparing for this made me sort of think about this. They said that this was after the Copenhagen Climate Summit, which didn't go well, they said that the pathways from Copenhagen through to 2100 imply temperature increase of between 2.5 to 5 degrees, right? We were heading for potentially up to 5 degrees. Now we are heading for something like 2.5, maybe 3 degrees. Don't get me wrong.

2 and a half 3 degrees, very bad. But it's just not true to say the world hasn't made progress. The world, in its very difficult way, through the multilateral process, which is kind of a nightmare, you know, has made progress. India has a net zero target. China has a net zero target. The UK has a net zero target. Now, you know, is China or India doing everything right? No.

Is Britain doing everything right? We're trying to. But, you know, it's not true that the world isn't taking this seriously. Why? It's because of self-interest. It's self-interest and economic opportunity. They think they see the dangers of climate, what it's doing, and they see that actually there is a path through. To channel Tony Blair for a moment, right?

I mean, surely he's right. There is a kind of credibility gap between the changes in lifestyle that are being demanded with the fact that actually, as he points out, the impact on global emissions of what you're doing is going to be minimal. Well, okay, two points. One, I sort of don't like the phrase changes in lifestyle. we're going to have better lives for people in the net zero world, right? The Climate Change Committee in their seventh carbon budget published earlier this year says that moving to net zero will cut people's energy bills by 700 pounds,

will cut people's motoring costs by 700 pounds. That's a better life for people. Warmer homes, tackling fuel poverty, green spaces, good jobs. They're all good things about it. And secondly, I think you, if I may say so in that question, are being far too defeatist about Britain. We passed the Climate Change Act 2008, started by my brother, completed by me. Countries around the, were the first to do it.

Countries around the world emulated us. Lots of countries around the world. We've got this mission, Clean Power by 2030. If we achieve that, and I'm absolutely determined we do, other countries will say, look, look what Britain's been able to do. We can do that too. So let's not have a diminished view of Britain. We really matter in this. many countries come to come to me and say you've got a really important responsibility here.

First episode, you mentioned the trade unions two or three times. One of your biggest critics on this is Gary Smith, the GMB, who I bumped into an airport not long ago, and he was absolutely on the oil and gas in particular. So in a way, does it, you feel like, it feels to me like you're being got at from the right, and to some extent by the right. No, look, Gary and I agree on a lot. he is worried about the North Sea. He's seen 70,000 jobs go in the North Sea in the last decade because the North Sea is a declining basin. Our responsibility, working with Gary and others, to make sure that we have a proper transition and a fair transition. Now, here's the absolute key to this. Why did those 70,000 jobs went and they weren't replaced? Why? Because the government

didn't have a proper industrial policy to have carbon capture and storage and jobs in offshore wind and hydrogen and all those things. And our job, our responsibility, which I'm determined we achieve, is to create those jobs. Things like Great British Energy, we'll come on to this in a sec, but Great British Energy,

publicly owned energy company, push forward by this government, anyway, part of achieving. Just taking the sort of the passion down for a second, which is wonderful. We don't mind passion. Moving and beautiful. You said that to every guess.

What are the risks? I mean, let's say, contrary to everything that you hope in 20 years time, it hasn't quite worked out that we replay this tape. And people are like, really? Did you, you know, did it really work out like that in the North Sea? Did it really work out like that for energy bills? What are the risks that you're thinking about? What are the two or three things that could go wrong and that you really worry about that might stop your dream coming true? The biggest single risk, Rory, is that we are held in absolute contempt by future generations because they say, you as a generation were in a unique position.

You knew about the problem. You knew about the scale of the problem. You saw wildfires. You saw heat wave deaths. By the way, 10,000 in the UK since 2020, according to the UK Health Agency. You knew the problem. and you had time to do something about it, and you totally fucked it up.

You didn't do it. Great. That is, that's, no, but I think it's really important point, Rory, that that is by far the biggest risk. And in 10 years time,

in 10 years time, people are going to be saying, not why were you taking this issue so seriously. They say, why the hell weren't you taking this issue more seriously than any other issue? That I guess is my question, right? So let's say in 20 years' time, people do say that.

Yeah. Right. And you didn't succeed in doing what they would have liked you to do. Yeah. What would be the factors that would lead to that failure? I think you've got to bring the public with you by making people better off, by converting the opportunity of cheaper, cleaner power to into people's homes, into people's lives. And what are the obstacles that? What might stop that happening?

One of the reasons I think a Labour government is best place to do this is that if you think about this, there are sort of benefits and burdens of this transition, and it's government expenditure, the role of government that makes those things fair and make sure that ordinary people benefit from these changes. So putting in a heat pump, we've got to make sure, yes, we need people to convert to heat pumps, got to make sure it's affordable for them and it's going to be cheaper to run the heat pump. Evis, you know, electric vehicles, similarly, it's got to make sense for ordinary people to the cost of living crisis. That is the single biggest thing. And the obstacle there, if you don't succeed in doing it

will be that in the end you weren't for whatever reason able to make it fully affordable. Yeah, I think we can, though. Where's the passion in the government for what you've just shown on climate for child poverty, for what's happening in Gaza?

I guess I'm asking about the things that maybe, because we've talked a lot about reform and the sort of catastrophe that happened to, apart from the mayor in Doncaster, in the local election, But Labour's also seems to me got problems on the liberal side of politics as well. So you said at the end of episode one, you know, the exam test, have we got the policy solutions to meet the challenge of the time? What's your own answer to that? I think what's interesting about the government is, as I was hinting at it by talking about

GBM, is there's an untold progressive story of the government, which we need to tell more. Just think about 10 months in. We had a budget that raised taxes on the world. wealthy and business to fund, properly fund public services to Rachel Reeves' massive credit that she did that. She also changed her fiscal rules, adjusted the way she accounted for them in order to sort of ensure that you could properly take advantage of investment. We've got the biggest package of workers' rights for a generation. We're renationalising the railways. We've got a big renter's rights package. We're raising the minimum wage. We need to tell that story. There is a progressive story to be told about this government, which I think is a very sort of plausible

good story, we need to tell it more. What are the obstacles to that? I don't know, like the noise, the sort of the pressures of government, collective responsibility to do that. But I'm proud of lots and lots of things that the government's done. But are you saying that it's just coming over as a bit technocratic, whereas what you're trying to say through how you've described your own brief, how you talked about Gordon in particular, that in the end, you have to get fire in people.

I think it, look, it was it you and I who used to say when we were in government, as a member of the government, you don't commentate on the government, you act. So I'm not going to commentate, but what I am going to say is I feel a sense of responsibility, as I'm sure my colleagues do, to tell this story about the progressive good things this going to. government is doing. And when I look around the cabinet table from KIA outwards, I see progressive people who are in politics for the right reasons and want to make the country a fair a place. Now, okay, I'm going to stop, stop this at the moment, because I think the risk is that all the stuff, all the charm of the authenticity is going up the window because it's becoming,

understandably, the defence of the government, which is not not the most fascinating thing. Do you want to attack the government? For the audience, well, attack the government or talk about something else. We've gone from beautiful and moving to not the most fantastic. But you must sense why the audience listening to this is just like, oh, for goodness sake. We know he's going to say that. He's going to say, you know, we're doing all these wonderful things. We just haven't communicated them well.

When I sit around the cabinet, they're amazing people. I think the Daily Mail are listening to that. They're thinking, did Ed Miliband just say, we're not telling the story well enough? Yeah, I don't know. Let's move off that onto something else. Where do you think the kind of big arc of history is going? What do you think is the lesson? Is part of the problem that you faced in 2015?

that actually the centre screwed up, that the 2008 financial crisis or the Iraq war were kind of symbols of things that the old liberal centre got really badly wrong. So that to some extent, the populists are kind of right in their analysis of what's wrong, even if they're completely misleading and what's solutionist and stuff. It's a really good question. It maybe goes back to what I said in episode one, which is people think there's really deep problems with the country. and say what you like about Brexit or Trump or Corbyn. They seem to offer at one point big solutions to, you know,

disruption. Brexit was a big move, even if we didn't agree with it. And I think it's, I think it's so hard this because government is hard and making change is hard. but you've got to convince people that you're obviously going in the right direction and you've got solutions equal to the scale of the challenge. What I've tried to do in my area is say, look, we had the energy crisis of 2020. We saw people's bills go through the roof. We have a big answer to this question.

And every day in government is about using that opportunity to drive towards it. I don't want to be presumptuous. I'd never presume to challenge your father, but I assume one critique that he might make or someone like him might make is that failure in 2015, and you sort of said this about yourself, is that you saw that things were bad, but you didn't fully understand that a lot of this is actually about the structure of late capitalism, that many of the things you're talking about, these insecure-erated jobs, the widening insecurity, the emergencies, massive conglomerates, is about really kind of fundamental social economic structures

and that to really create a justice society, you have to be far, far more radical. I mean, it's not enough to kind of tinker around the edges. Or is that an unfair version of what he might think? No, it's not. It's not an unfair version. It's a fair critique. I mean, it's a fair critique. We have developed over 30, 40 years, this is part of my critique of the last Labor government.

We've developed over the last 30, 40 years a particular economic model from the sort of 70s onwards. from Thatcher onwards, and that model has massive sort of insecurities for people. Now, Tony Blair here would say, yeah, but okay, fine, but what's the, you know, answers? You need answers, not grievance. And so it's charting the course to those answers is really hard. But I think, Rory, that is a lot. I mean, there's a lot of, you know, that is a lot of going on. But then there are good social democratic things you can do, building more housing,

creating good jobs, all of those things. giving more rights to people at work, which are an answer to that. And that's not meant to just be your old sort of had microchip inserted. I'm defending the government. I think there are answers. Why did Biden not quite manage it? And then I'll hand back to us. I mean, because I guess that was his instinct too.

And it somehow didn't quite work. Yeah. Look, I think Biden suffered from a whole range of things, not least people thinking that he was too old. And incumbency and, you know, inflation and all of those things. I think it's sort of, I think it's complicated to draw lessons. But I think here's the sort of strange thing, strange from a progressive point of view, about some of what Trump did in the 2016 election and again in the 2024 election, which is he showed a sense of empathy with people's struggles.

He got, like the guy in the pub I mentioned in episode one I met to talk to in Doncaster, you know, he showed a sense of empathy that life was really, really hard for people and saying it was okay, wasn't really going to cut it. But that worries me that in a way that you say that, because a lot of those people who are currently backing Nigel Farage will say that that's what he has. But you and I, I think, are both in agreement that his policy solutions are absolutely not the right way forward. So what's your strategy and what's Labour strategy between now and the next year of election? And I'd be interested to know whether you think the Tories are now almost irrelevant to this debate or not. But what's your strategy between now and the election to make sure that guy in the pub understands that Farage is not the answer?

He actually makes things worse. Three things. First of all, values. Are you making decisions in our interests, in the interests of ordinary working people? Is what... So did winter fuel allowance fit in that? Does immigration fit in that? Look, I'm not going to get into specific decisions that were made.

I think we face a singularly difficult economic inheritance, which explains things like the decisions on winter fuel. But look, let me just, so values, is what's driving you the right values? Secondly, delivery. So values on its own is not enough. You've got to show things are getting better, the NHS, waiting list falling and all that. That's really, really important. And then exposure, you've got to expose your opponents. Look, take this climate thing.

I'm looking forward to campaigning against reform on the fact. that their wish to shut down net zero is saying to people in T-side who are going to be employed in carbon capture and storage, you're going to lose your job. You know, to people in hull making wind turbines, you're going to lose your job. You know, let's have the argument. Let's take, I mean, this is one of the things just to flatter you for a second, Alistair, that, you know, you taught me, you, you and I discussed a lot in government. Make the big arguments. Nobody ever won an argument they didn't make. Go out there and make a big argument.

I'm going to finish with moving in beautiful no I'm going to finish your question if we take you back to your kind of 15, 16 year old self sitting around the dinner table with family and trying to explain to father, mother, brother, friends

what you're trying to do, what kind of difference you're trying to make, what you think you've succeeded in life and what you've failed in, what would be a sort of interest perspective, quieter family way of explaining the shape, maybe the way you'd explain it to your own family today. I think that the fight for sort of progressive politics and progress is not a one-generation task. I think it's one thing I learned from my dad is that that it's a constant struggle.

I think he used to describe socialism as a sort of process, not an outcome. and you're striving for the fairer, more just society. And what's always motivated me ever since I joined the Labour Party, ever since I got interested in politics, is how do you tackle injustice? How do you tackle injustice in Britain and how do you tackle injustice in the world? And climate is just one part of the way I think about politics. And it's for me, it's an expression of that commitment to sort of tackling injustice. And I think what I'd want my kids' future generation to think is like he was striving for a more just world.

My last question, you mentioned your kids there. So I think it was Samuel, who when you did lose the election and you were home a lot more, you once told me sort of you had the sense that, well, they were quite happy. They were relieved. They were quite relieved. They were out the front line. They were tasted with the country. Yeah.

but you're sort of now, I mean, I know it's not the same as being leader, but you're still in a kind of 24-7 existence, and you're still in the public eye. And I just wonder whether what you've learned about them. And I guess this question, whether you think actually in modern politics, it's even possible to be a good parent. Look, it's really hard.

But there's probably a bit of guilt coming out of that question. Your own, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and mine. It's really hard. It's just really hard. After I lost the election, I was around a lot more. You can sort of console yourself by thinking, yeah, but a purposeless parent who's not that happy, he's not a great parent to have around. I try even, you know, in being in the front line to be a good father and a good husband.

You know, it's the biggest sacrifice of frontline. It's the biggest sacrifice of frontline politics. It's really hard. I don't think there's an easy answer. I hope my kids, I think I'm both trying to do the right thing and trying to be a good parent to them. I'm not sure they'll go into politics, so I think they'll probably think, you know, there must be different ways of earning a living, but also trying to pass on some of those values

that we've talked about in this discussion. Well, thank you. Thank you for all your time. Thank you very much. Thank you. So, Alastair, listen, I mean, it must be pretty tough interviewing somebody who you've known for 30 years.

I mean, you know, sort of his brother, his family. And it's your tribe. That's not the thing I find difficult in the interview. It's the fact that I know the answers and the detail to a lot of the questions that it's just hard sometimes to sort of, do I push back on that? Because you picked up at one point on the fact that, look, Ed, you're slightly going into sort of message machinery now.

He was, in a way. To be fair to him, he didn't do it that often, given he's a serving cabinet minister. But look, I was right at the heart of the whole the David Ed thing and talking to both of them and, you know, some pretty passionate, emotional things were said. And you sort of think, well, am I being a bit disingenuous in here and asking him?

And also things like how he recovered from the defeat. Because I saw him a bit during that period. as well and, you know, I think he was in quite a bad way. He even went to Australia and grew a beard, which is never a good sign, I would say. So, no, that's the difficulty I find. And it's difficult because some of this you know from a private personal basis, so you'd feel it's a bit unfair saying, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Yeah, exactly.

Hold a second, hold a second. You know, I saw you that evening and it really wasn't quite true with that WhatsApp message you said to that. I mean, I did do the example of Tony Blair, where he was clearly trying to be diplomatic way. I mean, the messages he sent me that night was as if I was still in number 10. And you were responsible. And Tony Blair was still the prime minister. What the fuck are you doing letting this happen kind of thing?

So, yeah. But I thought in terms of where I thought he was, I thought he was very, very thoughtful and reflective about his parents, about where he came from. And I thought you could tell sort of quite still very, very raw about some of the emotions of that and his relationship with his dad. I thought that was interesting actually. I mean, he said he had a much older father. But in fact, my father was 50 when I was born. His father was in his mid-40s. And I felt, I just sort of getting personal, that because my father was older, and I worried

that he would die and he talked openly about, he loved the phrase three score years and 10, so I kind of had him in my head that he was going to make it to 70. And I found that that meant that when he died, I was much more reconciled towards it and had actually a wonderful time with him, where I'd learned so much about him, spent so much time with him. That doesn't seem to have been the case with that. I mean, he really, I think, felt it was an incredible blow. Really, he said it was the worst thing to ever happen in his mid-20s. Yeah, so I think he was very, very reflective on that.

I thought when he was doing the net zero stuff and his job, as it were, I do want to see more of that passion from the government across the piece. I'm sure there are things the government is doing that he feels uncomfortable with. But I thought on his own brief, I just want to see more of that passion. Well, I think he's, I think what's presumably motivating him is that on his own brief, he is actually very, very radical. I mean, he's the only person in government, I think, that people look at and I like, oh, okay, he really knows what he's trying to do. And from the point of view of some people in the energy sector, he's really scaring them. But the other stuff, I think if he could step back from his cabinet role and really open up, he can't actually think that the government is matching up to his vision of go big, go home radicalism.

You know, his conclusion is basically didn't go left-wing enough when he ran. And he's now looking at a government that is very sort of centrist, Blairite. In fact, in some ways, he's more right-wing than someone like you wants to go. So he must be sitting there thinking. Did you listen to, Rory? He said that I was much more left-wing than people really. Exactly. That's right. You know, that's good.

That's good. That's good. I think he must actually look at Rachel Reeves and the government and be thinking, for goodness sake, you know, if I felt that that first time we were in power, We didn't do enough on inequality. We didn't do enough on the fundamental structures of the country. This government, it's not bringing back sure start. It's not dealing with the two-trial benefit cap.

It's not dealing with winter fuel allowance. It's very much, you know, full on cautious about the bond markets, don't want to put up taxes, etc. I don't think that says politics at all. I think he's well to the left of those people, isn't he? What I saw in him there was real, raw passion about the job. that he's doing. And I wonder if that's the way of dealing both with the fact that he has been a leader, has been through that, you know, horror of a defeat. And as he said, even on the morning, a lot of people thought he was going to be prime minister the next day. Did you? Did I? I don't

think I did. I don't think I did. I actually saw a lot of it during the campaign because we didn't really get into this, but I was often David Cameron during the TV debate preparations. You were playing Cameron, playing your favourite Old Italian. And I really gave him, oh, God, I used to duff him up like hell. Did you do a good impression of Cameron? I didn't impressinate him, but I did some pretty rough stuff. Well, you were like a Bullington boy bully. I wasn't bullying, but I remember one line.

I don't know if I should say this, really. Go on, go on, Alice. Oh, God, so, well, what it was, I was, we were doing the Q&A bit, right? And the guy called Theo Bartram, who was playing Clegg. And I was Cameron, and Ed was obviously Ed. and we were asked about the most difficult decision that we'd ever made. And I, as David Cameron, said, well, the thing is that the most difficult decision you ever make as Prime Minister is actually about sending troops to do, da, da, da, da, da, da. And then Ed said something like, well, the most difficult decisions I make are those where you're making really tough political choices to devise the policies to help the country go in a better direction kind of thing.

It was sort of, and I came back with, well, I didn't actually detect in that a single decision that he's made. Because, of course, the only decision he's ever really had to make was how deeply to stick the knife into the back of his brother. Whoa. And you did this just before he was going into his leaders to bed. No, it was a few days before. Blimey. You know, let's throw him off balance before. So, so he was certainly, Edward.

He said, he wouldn't do that, would he? I said, who Cameron? David Cameron, that nice, lovely, cuddly, Tory David Cameron. Be prepared, Ed. So yeah, we had some great times. Just on that one. I mean, this is tough for you because we've interviewed David Miliband. He's obviously a very close friend of yours.

But I think I got a sense when you were channeling your mother saying, how could a brother do that? There's something very interesting there. It's not my job to do a cod psychology of Ed. But I feel in that interview a little boy in his teens with a very charismatic big character father. mother and a very kind of dominating older brother four years older than him, who presumably was getting all the school prizes and good-looking. And that moment when his brother is about to sort of take the crown that's waiting for him to be the next leader of the Labour Party and prime minister and him feeling, fucker it. Why not me? Why can't I have a go? And presumably his friends and maybe

his wife saying to him, go on just because he's your brother, this is your chance, you've got the ideas, stand up for yourself, for yourself, and all that package of being that little boy. Oh, it's a bit called psychology. I think at the time, look, there's no doubt. I mean, you know, this is a, this is where it is a little bit Shakespearean. As I said, when we're talking to him, I think there was a broad feeling that David would probably be the next leader, and a lot of people who felt that should happen. And let's remember, the members and the MPs. And still today. I mean, yeah, the members and the MPs both voted for David. More for him than for it. Yeah, but I think that what came through in the interview was actually that Ed, he felt that there was a real risk that there wouldn't be a sufficient break from new Labor.

And what I think Ed managed to do, and this must have been quite difficult politically, because you are talking about your brother and you're talking about families and all that stuff. Because I think David would have represented a change. I think he would have been a different sort of leadership to the Labour Party. Because they're a very different feeling to Gordon Brown. And to Tony, in some extent. Yeah, but above all to Gordon Brown, who'd been the most recent one. Exactly. But I think what Ed and co, let's say the strategists,

managed to do in a way was to pin David on Tony in a way that Ed didn't get pinned on Gordon. So that Ed was able to sort of signal this is going to be a bigger change. And to be fair to Ed, I think that was genuinely driven by a politics that probably is to the left of where we'd been, and still is. And, you know, the fact is there have been difficult times. There's no doubt about that. But we have, Fiona and I have managed to keep very good relations with both of them.

We're very close to David and Louise. But Ed and Justina, really, really nice people. And I'm glad that he's there banging the drum for something, which, you know, all around the world is under attack, which is the climate crisis. Very good. Well, there were many other things we didn't get into. I wanted to ask him about the grid, for example, but maybe that's a bit nerdy. What, the number 10 grid that we invented or the electric grid?

Yeah, well, I think that's a very... Because basically what we learned in Spain is that we put this huge investment into the generation, like the wind turbines or nuclear, whatever it is. And this is a massive problem with moving energy around. We do have coming up in the near future, and if you're with Emma Pinchbeck, who is in charge of the climate change committee, so maybe we can do a bit of gridding on that one. Very good. Thank you.

See you soon. Bye-bye. Hi, it's Dominic here from the, rest is history, and here is that clip that I mentioned earlier. The other thing is something else she gets from Grantham, and that's the Methodism. And actually this to me, I think this is one of the absolute defining things of Thatcherism. It's the tone, the moralistic, evangelical tone. Yeah, and the low church tone rather than the high church tone. Completely. Margaret, as a girl, had to say grace before every meal. She had to go to chapel three or four times on Sundays.

Her father, as a lay preacher, went on and on and on about hard work, individualism, thrift, clean living, all of this. And this is what I think makes her politics different. There is a moralism to it, a low church moralism, that is totally unlike anything that any other Tory leader says before her. So in 1984, an interview with The Times, I am in politics because of the conflict between good and evil, and I believe that in the end, good will triumph. I mean, Ted Heath could have lived to the age of 10,000, and he would never have said anything like that. It's unthinkable. Also, I mean, what's interesting is that it's giving to the left what the left often give to the right. It's casting the left as evil and the right as virtuous.

And usually it's the other way around. Completely it is. I mean, you see this reflected in her archives, which are online at the Thatcher Foundation website, which is brilliant, by the way. This amazing digital archive. you can see all the notes that she would handwrite for her conference speeches. And they'd be full of all the stuff about the evils of socialism, good versus evil, what the great religions of the past teach us, what life is struggle.

Her speechwriters would cut all this. They'd say, God, this is bonkers. But it would find its way in one way or another. And I think you're absolutely right. She thinks socialism is not just wrong. she thinks it's morally it's evil. It's corrupting. And people in 70s Britain, you know, they're used to thinking, socialists are well-meaning and idealistic. Maybe they're a bit deluded, but blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, she doesn't think that. She doesn't think they are well-meaning and idealistic. She thinks that

they're doing the devil's work. And that's what makes for her admirers, it's so invigorating. And for her critics, I mean, if you're on the left, right, and you're used to thinking of yourself, of yourself as the goodies. To be told, actually, you're not, you're the bad people. It's insulting. And it's why, I think, one reason why people take it so personally when she sort of wades into battle. If you want to hear more, search for the rest is history wherever you get your podcasts.