Ed Miliband

Edward Samuel Miliband (born 24 December 1969) is a British politician serving as Shadow Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero since 2021.

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

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

Owing to his father's later employment as a roving teacher, Miliband spent two spells living in Boston, Massachusetts, one year when he was seven and one middle school term when he was twelve.

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

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

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

After completing his O-levels, he worked as an intern to family friend Tony Benn, the MP for Chesterfield.

In 1989, Miliband gained four A Levels—in Mathematics (A), English (A), Further Mathematics (B) and Physics (B)—and then read Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Corpus Christi College, Oxford.

In his first year, he was elected JCR President, leading a student campaign against a rise in rent charges.

In his second year he dropped philosophy, and was awarded an upper second class Bachelor of Arts degree.

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

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

In 1993, Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury Harriet Harman approached Rawnsley to recruit Miliband as her policy researcher and speechwriter.

At the time, Yvette Cooper also worked for Harman as part of Labour's Shadow Treasury team.

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

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

After Labour's 1997 landslide victory, Miliband was appointed as a special adviser to Chancellor Gordon Brown from 1997 to 2002.

He has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Doncaster North since 2005.

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

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

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

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

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

When Brown became Prime Minister in 2007, he appointed Miliband Minister for the Cabinet Office and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster.

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

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

After the Labour Party was defeated at the 2010 general election, Brown resigned as Leader of the Labour Party; in September 2010, Miliband was elected to replace him.

His tenure as Labour leader was characterised by a leftward shift in his party's policies under the "One Nation Labour" branding, and by opposition to the Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition government's cuts to the public sector.

His elder brother, David Miliband, still owns the house as of 2010.

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

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

Following Labour's defeat by the Conservative Party at the 2015 general election, Miliband resigned as leader on 8 May 2015.

He was succeeded following a leadership election by Jeremy Corbyn.

On 6 April 2020, Corbyn's successor Keir Starmer appointed Miliband Shadow Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, succeeding Rebecca Long-Bailey.

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

Born in University College Hospital in Fitzrovia, London, Miliband is the younger son of immigrant parents.

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

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

The family lived on Edis Street in Primrose Hill, London.