The Liberal Democrats deputy leader Jo Swinsonis married to former Liberal Democrat MP Duncan Hames, who is believed to be the first MP to take a baby through a voting lobby. The aim of the party conference in September was to present a six-point plan for the bright future into which Miliband would lead the country. He was initially brought into Milibands inner circle by Lucy Powell, Milibands first chief of staff who has since become MP for Manchester Central. By sunrise, they knew it had all been a mirage. But as was typical of Milibands campaign, a single speech was deemed sufficient for a box to be ticked. There were other problems, of course: the highly touted but ultimately ineffective 15m ground campaign; Labours difficulty in attracting elderly voters; the partys wariness to discuss identity or Englishness. Subsequently David decided to leave front-line politics and not serve in Eds shadow cabinet. @Ed_Miliband. We do not comment on his logistical operational movements., When it was pointed out that the event had already taken place - so there was no threat to security - Mr Stewart replied: You wont get me to change my mind.. Then the seats came up. They also hold Norwich City Football Club season tickets in Norfolk, where Wild has family and stood unsuccessfully for North Norfolk in the snap election. Strategy, press, policy, economics, stakeholder engagement, foreign affairs. And the meeting ended, and we all got up and Stewarts was the only one apart from Ed still sitting there. Ed Miliband has spoken out about his relationship with his brother David following their epic feud several years ago. But it is also the backdrop to many a romantic liaison, where you might be surprised to discover that your lunch partner is more than familiar with the subject of your conversation. But if you are asking me, Did that spending actually cause the crash?, the answer is No. The answer lies in failure to regulate the banks.. Assistant Editor of the Spectator Isabel Hardman and Labour MP John Woodcockare a notable Westminster item. Follow the Guardian Long Read on Twitter: This article was amended on 3 June 2015. He was reelected to his seat in the House of Commons in the June 2017 snap election. Theyre learning. It was very unpleasant. In the days that followed, there were angry phone calls and warnings about loyalty and Miliband did not speak to Livermore, the perceived ringleader, for a fortnight. And it is this team, rather than the shadow cabinet, that will decide the direction of Britain should Miliband win. It was a shambles. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. Not just a big name in Northern Ireland, Nigel Dodds is now a significant figure in the rest of the U.K. after his party did a deal with the Conservatives to keep Theresa May in power after she failed to secure a majority in the June snap election. Labour Party. 24. Stewart Wood, the Labour peer, is not exactly a household name. Maybe. This time, the dead cat was supplied by the defence secretary Michael Fallon. A memo was drawn up by Baldwin, acknowledging that the campaign was in trouble. The group of senior advisors that plan to cross the threshold of Number 10 with Ed Miliband do not have formidable reputations. Miliband was the son of Jewish (and Marxist) refugees who had survived the Holocaust during World War II. So the two arguments cancelled each other out.. Tim Livesey, 54 Chief of Staff Labours focus groups were still finding that Tory attacks on Milibands leadership had not had the intended effect. Updated: September 21, 2013 He was unable to delegate responsibility outside a very small circle.. Instead, as the real results confirmed the exit poll, the discussion turned to the question of Milibands resignation, and whether he should stay on in a caretaker role, as Michael Howard had after the Tory defeat in 2005. It was Anna who told Ed the last month before the leadership vote, Youre not going to do anything for the next two weeks except stand in the atrium of Portcullis House and glad-hand every Labour MP who walks by. And he did. It is an overstatement to say he did not think the conference mattered at all, but the blunt way of putting it is that, in his head, he thought he was in a stronger position than the rest of us probably thought, said one close adviser. Sunday Times Political Editor and All Out War authorTim Shipman is married to David Camerons former head of media operations Charlotte Todman. Both are part of the current government, Lancaster as a minister at the Ministry of Defense and Dinenage at the Department for Work and Pensions. It was time for him to rebrand himself as a man capable of telling hard truths about the difficult issues facing post-crash Britain, such as benefits and devolution. But we neither confronted nor conceded we simply tried to move on.. His critics run around saying Livesey doesnt get how all this works. And Tim just sits there quietly, and strikes another name off his list.. He used the disagreement as a means to get his own way. Labour MP Stephen Kinnockis married to theformer Danish prime minister, nowCEO of Save the Children InternationalHelle Thorning-Schmidt. Most of the plans discussed at the meeting were implemented only halfheartedly. There was no explosion, but the tension was horrible, one attendee said. Alastair Campbell who was increasingly involved in the final weeks of the campaign, even attending meetings with Milibands inner circle wrote a punchy one nation speech for Chatham House. Check out the latest pictures, photos and images of James Stuart and Ed Miliband. But the planned week-long assault sputtered out after a single signed article by Miliband in the Times, on 6 January 2011, which accused the Tories of deceit, citing evidence from around the world to argue that a global credit crunch caused deficits to rise on every continent. Matt Goshko, director of press at the U.S. Embassy, and Susannah Goshko, deputy director at the Department for Exiting the European Union. Then someone will say, OK. Miliband was so distraught that he shut himself in his hotel room, where a series of people, including his wife, Justine, joined him and tried to offer some reassurance pointing out that the omission had not featured prominently in the BBC political editor Nick Robinsons report on the Six OClock News. Paul O'Grady and Jools Holland are new for me so I apologise if they are. After hours: Talk is usually domestic practicalities at their home in Tufnell Park in north London. The team that Miliband had assembled around him consisted of highly intelligent individuals, but the whole was less than the sum of its parts it was, according to many of those advisers, like a court in which opposing voices cancelled one another out. Whos dating whom in the corridors of power. You have stumbled upon yet another video. The agenda would have been about a second Tory term and what that might mean for the NHS, Europe, tax credits and Scotland. At five minutes to ten oclock on election night, moments before the exit poll was released, Labour headquarters was preparing to claim power, convinced that against the odds, they could combine with other parties to lock David Cameron out of Downing Street. It caused all sort of problems, says one Labour insider. Subscribe to leave a comment. Ed Miliband delivers his speech without notes to the partys annual conference in Manchester but forgets to mention the deficit. Instead, when an audience member asked him: Do you accept that when Labour was last in power, it overspent?, Miliband began his answer, No, I dont, to gasps from members of the audience. They were toxic politically. Thus, two brothers sat in Britains cabinet for the first time since the 1930s. Campbell. He didnt advocate personal attacks, but he was clear he had to go for him on policy. Mr Miliband was interviewed live by the BBC on Saturday about the televised general election debates. So we have the meeting with Bush and his people, and Gordons in there with Stewart and a couple of others. Dromey, atrade unionist, has been MP for Birmingham Erdington since 2010. Miliband, who describes himself as both culturally Jewish and an atheist, had a far less dramatic upbringing. Its not really talking shop, its just talking about the world, she said. EdMiliband warns voters against Brexit free market experiment, EdMiliband interview: 'The thing that's important to me is that the fight goes on', Zero carbon emissions target to be enshrined in UK law, EdMiliband praised after giving a rough sleeper 10, 'Ed Stone' was destroyed shortly after general election, Miliband had simply forgotten the brief passage about the deficit, announced his resignation on 20 January 2011, such as Gareth, whom Miliband had met while walking in Hampstead Heath. The previous year, Miliband had appointed the shadow foreign secretary, Douglas Alexander, as chair of general election strategy, and Spencer Livermore as his general election campaign director. Notably, he proposed that union members no longer automatically be assessed a political contribution (most of which went to Labour); instead of the choice of opting out of the contribution, members would choose whether to opt in. Jack Dromey and Harriet Harman at the 2015 Labour Party fall conference | Ben Pruchnie/Getty Images. One problem for Miliband is both Henricson Bell and Beales are currently looking for safe seats at the upcoming election. In one sense, Livermore was a surprising appointment: he had been a special adviser to Brown from 1997 to 2008, and was seen as closely associated with New Labour, from which Miliband had tried to distance himself. Elly Schlein shouldnt be a problem for Georgia Meloni, As deputy leader, Tom Watson may now be the Labour Partys only hope, Harry, Meghan and the rise and fall of the folie deux, The importance of exposing Matt Hancocks WhatsApp messages. Such a coalition would have well over 40% of the popular vote. It set out a series of suggestions as such memos often do for Miliband. Eds decision to stand against his brother caused widespread surprise, but, even with three other candidates on the ballot, the contest quickly became a two-horse race. But those insiders who scoff at Liveseys knowledge of their party do so at their peril. Nigel and Diane Dodds, following his win at the 2015 general election | Charles McQuillan/Getty Images. Strong campaigns by leading trade unions gave Ed a narrow victory (trade union members held one-third of the votes) on September 25, 2010. Ed Miliband lives in North London with barrister wife Justine Thornton and their sons Daniel and Samuel. And it is this team the bookies still have as favorites to win the 2015 general election. The architects of New Labour. In 1993, after a brief period as a television researcher, he started working for Labour Party MP Harriet Harman. We then asked the BBC where they had filmed Mr Miliband, but they did not respond. For the exit poll seat projections to be right, Labour had to be wiped out in Scotland, the Liberal Democrats would have to be wiped out in their Tory marginals and we would have to done really badly in the English marginals, the campaign aide recalled. Born in London, Miliband is the son of Polish Jewish immigrants Marion Kozak and the late Marxist intellectual Ralph Miliband (a Brussels native whose parents were from Warsaw), who fled Belgium during World War II and the younger brother of . Tim isnt wet behind the ears. When Miliband was weighing up the fateful decision to run against his brother, Wood was his sounding board. Instead, it turned into a referendum on the risks of a minority Labour government. 10. Thats three big personalities youve got there, said one, and No. The predictable, cautious Ed vanished, and something altogether sassier was unleashed. So we were trying to put together the policy offer in these awful conference calls between various offices in Scotland and London. But Labours legacy played a role far larger than anyone had expected. Its a wish list of vague commitments. Self: UK General Election. It gives them a sense of order. That exit poll will be seared in my brain for ever. Bell and Livermore stared at each other in disbelief, as the whole room put their hands to their mouths in shock. Others feared it would simply provide another day of media headlines about the SNP. After hours:Walks on an Essex beach, seclusion away from public life, concerts, jobs about the house and entertaining are the couples shared interests. But his wife insisted that it was not the right decision he should not have to be repeatedly mocked by Tory MPs at prime ministers questions, she argued. (The stones demolition, in the event of a Labour loss, had been agreed at the time it was commissioned. He had proposed a week-long attack on the great Tory deception over the deficit, which was to have involved the entire shadow cabinet. The prepared answer, broadly, was: I dont think every penny was well spent. Yet the attempt to humanise some rather abstract messages by telling stories about ordinary people such as Gareth, whom Miliband had met while walking in Hampstead Heath fell horribly flat. At the meeting, Miliband was suspicious and defensive, sticking to his inequality agenda. Ben Pattenden tweeted: Did I just spot Tenterden on @BBCNews .. Looks incredibly like it!. After spending a year (200203) as a visiting scholar at Harvard University, Ed was selected as Labour candidate for Doncaster North, in Yorkshire. It was this team that secured the Labour leadership against the odds. [/audioplayer]If the opinion polls and bookmakers are to be believed, some time during the morning of Friday 8 May next year a small group of men and women will appear out of the of the Derby Gate entrance of the old Scotland Yard building on Whitehall, stride purposefully across the road, and assemble at the gates of Downing Street. His appointment saw plenty of raised eyebrows inside and outside the Labour family, given he was at that time serving at Lambeth Palace as chief of staff to Rowan Williams, then Archbishop of Canterbury. They met in the lobby when Merrick was working at the Daily Mail and Helm was at the Telegraph. A spreading zero-hours gig economy cannot be good for the well-being of workers. We were getting inside-page leads and number three or four on the broadcasts, one adviser said. Or we could say nothing and get lots of good headlines in a years time, said one shadow cabinet adviser. This is his first general. The BBCs relentless focus on Scotland is potentially of huge political benefit not only to the SNP but also to the Conservative party. The transfer of responsibility is said to have angered Henricson Bell. Its odd, one Labour MP told me. In the aftermath of the drubbing, Miliband resigned his leadership of the Labour Party. And to be fair, he did get a grip, recalls one former aide. On 26 March, in an interview with Jeremy Paxman, Miliband delivered the memorable line: Am I tough enough? Thrilled to announce that at 42, I am having a baby with my partner Jack. Loudon is now a partner at politicaladvisorygroupHanbury Strategy while Tanner is chief policy adviser at Portland Communications. He was really upset, the speech writer recalled. He quickly decided that he would not say anything; in panicked phone calls between Doncaster and Labour headquarters, his advisers tried to determine whether the exit poll could be correct. Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree. Ed Miliband wanted big structural changes to the way the economy worked, one of Milibands advisers told me, while Balls wanted to make the case for Keynesian stimulus. There was never a sense of arrogance, an adviser who was in the room said. They are currently engaged in a guerrilla war with foxes that are destroying their garden. This pair met at the 1984 Conservative Party conference in Brighton the year anIRA bomb was planted in an attempt assassinate then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. This has been corrected. Labours announcements on key issues, such as the NHS, were falling flat. We would love to tell you why, but cant. Former Ed Miliband spokesperson James Stewart and Sky News Political Correspondent Tamara Cohen. If you look at the negative briefing around Eds recent Israel trip, which Tim organised, that was the Livermore camp. He divides opinion more than any other member of Milibands circle. Updates? Then one day Jon just fronted him up and said look, I can spend fifteen minutes walking you through what youve been up to here, or you could just stop.. Samana Haq, who will shortly be head of news at the Ministry of Justice after eight years in the lobby as ITV News Westminster news editor, married Carl Dinnen,ITV political correspondent, earlier this year. Ed Miliband lives in North London with barrister wife Justine Thornton and their sons Daniel and Samuel Age: 45 Electoral history: MP for Doncaster North since 2005. After hours:We still talk about politics all the time, Merrick told POLITICO. Instead of offering reassurance on the deficit, we were offering extra borrowing. The Jenkins have two grown-up boys. Latest news, analysis and comment on defense in Europe and beyond. Compare our pictures and make up your own mind. A bunch of medieval courtiers, not an office, said another. Even Tony Blair said Ed had been right to put inequality back on the agenda. Trying to find the right nursery, school, college, university or training provider in Kent or Medway? BBC Westminster Hour presenter Carolyn Quinn and i newspaper Political Editor Nigel Morrisare another example of lobby love. Both have left Downing Street since the general election. Eventually policy development was handed to Jon Crudass, fomer aide to Tony Blair ,and MP for Dageham. The other two envisioned Miliband as prime minister: one had the Tories on 270 to 285, unable to form a government; the other had Labour with slightly more votes than the Tories, but with slightly fewer, or the same, number of seats. We had to lance the boil. Unless Miliband could present the public with a bigger and more inspiring message, Axelrod told him, it would be impossible to regain the support of the white working-class voters who were deserting the Labour party. When I wrote a story [Todman] didnt like during the referendum I was made to sleep in the spare room for two nights, Shipman told POLITICO. He started producing all these bit of paper. The Rt Hon Edward Miliband is the Labour MP for Doncaster North, and has been an MP continuously since 5 May 2005. 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Lucy got Torsten in to try and help her get a grip. In the weeks before the European elections that May, Milibands pitch to the public remained mostly incoherent. It made us the risk.. Douglas Alexander wanted Miliband to use the speech to confront Cameron over the SNP. Former Press Secretary to the Prince of WalesMark Bolland ismarried toGuy Black, who sits in the House of Lords asBaron Black of Brentwood and is also executive director of the Telegraph Media Group. The group of senior advisors that plan to cross the threshold of Number 10 with Ed Miliband do not have formidable reputations. Or is it the Politics of a New Generation? Miliband had, with his speechwriters, prepared two responses, each different in tone: one if Labour was confident that the Tories had lost, and the other for the possibility of a Conservative Liberal Democrat DUP coalition. By June 2011, as the UK economy headed for recession, Balls had largely set aside the issue of Labours economic legacy and was locked in battle with George Osborne over how to lift the economy out of a deepening slump. Hell do his job, but he isnt going to start drinking the Team Miliband Kool-Aid, said a colleague. Here is POLITICOs guide to the Westminster power couples you need to know. Marc isnt massively political. The key issue they had to address was the point at which Labour fell so far behind the Tories that Labour would be unable to form a credible minority government. The games, the games. Latest news, analysis and comment from POLITICOs editors and guest writers on the continent. So he tries again. Hes the one who can pick up the phone to people in the White House., Wood was at Ed Milibands side from the beginning. That Sunday, in a car park in Hastings, Miliband unveiled an 8ft 6in slab of limestone, into which had been carved Labours six election pledges. Benedict Brogan,former deputy editor of the Telegraph, now director of group public affairs at Lloyds Banking Group, is married to the Department for Communities and Local Government Permanent SecretaryMelanie Dawes. 2. Fracking licences in Scotland are handled by the Scottish Government. The next day, Miliband was ripped apart in the media, which added to the sense that his campaign was losing its discipline. Shadow Brexit Minister Jenny Chapman is married to shadow whip Nick Smith. Shes got better trade-craft than people realise., A former adviser agrees. The latest news, data and analysis on the worlds pandemic response. Caroline Dinenage and Mark Lancaster, right, visiting a Royal Navy submarine | Gosport Conservatives. Once in Westminster, she metJack Lopresti, the MP for Filton and Bradley Stoke, and the couple began dating later that year. Our middle boy, Andrew, passed away aged eight in 1998. In fact, Miliband had simply forgotten the brief passage about the deficit the one addressing the issue that had hung over parliament like an ominous cloud for the previous four years. Milibands senior advisers huddled for the next hour, trying to decipher the stated results. Now he is willing to stab the United Kingdom in the back to become prime minister. Milibands team seethed at the tactic, though several confessed a lingering admiration for its effectiveness. Greg manages the feedback from the focus groups and the polling. Asked where his boss was on Saturday, Mr Miliband's spokesman James Stewart said: "We do not comment on his movements. Ed Miliband has been filling in on Radio 2 this week in the absence of Jeremy Vine, who is on a two-week holiday: highlights have included his interview with the singer from thrash metal band. This strategic paralysis was still in place a fortnight later when Alan Johnson, Labours shadow chancellor, announced his resignation on 20 January 2011. The party would be unable to have an honest debate about what had gone wrong if he remained. Stewart was the one who told Ed that, to win, he needed to drive a wedge between himself and David, says one MP. Beales is popular and respected, but frequently runs up against the see no evil, hear no evil culture of Milibands office. So, was he in town? But they had managed to forge a reputation for constructing and driving one of the most formidable political operations in post-war British history. Labour MP Jon Cruddasis married tolong-serving Labour Party special adviserAnna Healy, who was made a life peer in 2010 and sits in the House of Lords as Baroness Healy of Primrose Hill. . Shadow Health Secretary Jonathan Ashworth is married to Labour Party Executive Director Emilie Oldknow. But our inquiries as to whether Mr Miliband was in town drew blanks and bizarre replies from his people. One close adviser admitted that he was initially perplexed as to why posters were appearing all over English towns that depicted Miliband in the pocket of Alex Salmond. Leader of the House of Lords Natalie Evans the youngest member of Mays Cabinet does not work far from her Ministry of Defense special adviser husband, James Wild. Marcs basically Eds security blanket, said one. We thought part of our problem was that we were very downbeat and depressing always telling people whats wrong with the country, one senior adviser told me. It was only a hundred words including a promise to eliminate the deficit as soon as possible but Miliband only realised the error, to his horror, as he walked off the stage.