Just 41, David Miliband is one of the youngest ministers in government. Yet insiders tip him as the party’s next-leader-but-one. Some go further still. Despite a dazzling political rise from parliamentary newcomer to Environment secretary in just five years, Blair’s favorite lieutenant has made no obvious enemies. So, some suggest, why not even skip a generation and go straight to him as a P.M. with the potential to unite a faction-ridden party? Says one friend: “There are plenty in Downing Street who would like to see him build a coalition right now.”
Like any good politician, Miliband avoids any displays of excessive ambition. During last week’s power struggle, he spoke diplomatically of “an energizing, fresh transition to Gordon Brown,” while disclaiming any aspirations to the top job. “I’ve always said the same thing,” he told NEWSWEEK. “Never think about the next job or you’ll lose the one you’ve got.” Such reticence won’t stop his admirers from listing his leader-like qualities, however.
Start with his age. He’s only two years older than David Cameron, the new Conservative leader who’s out to restore his party’s support beyond its traditional rump of middle-aged and middle-class diehards. Or his intellect. Miliband’s résumé features a first-class degree from Oxford, followed by a spell at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Starting while still in his 20s he ran Blair’s policy unit for seven years. A tad elitist? At least that stellar education began the hard way at a multiethnic state school in central London rather than at Eton College, Cameron’s alma mater. For good measure, Miliband represents a constituency in England’s northeast, where the postindustrial realities of everyday life are inescapable.
In the Miliband background, there’s something to reassure all Labour factions. His adherence to Blairism goes unquestioned (he wrote much of the party’s last election manifesto), but his father was a Marxist academic and his credentials as a party stalwart begin in childhood. The young Miliband was out canvassing for the party with his dad at the age of 9. On the other hand, his private life sends reassuringly bourgeois signals: a home in Primrose Hill, a patch of central London favored by the wealthy and cultured, and a wife who plays the violin with the London Symphony Orchestra. He’s already handled tricky ministerial jobs in education and local government, and as Environment secretary he’s pushing a politically fashionable Green agenda. “He had his rows with Gordon Brown when he was running the policy unit, but they never became personal,” says one former colleague, adding that he’ll have an important place under any future Brown government. Or maybe more.
