Ed Miliband

Biography

Ed Miliband was born in London in 1969, the younger son of the Marxist scholar Ralph Miliband and the human rights campaigner Marion Kozak, both from Polish Jewish families. He grew up in London and Leeds, read philosophy, politics and economics at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and later took a master's in economics at the London School of Economics.

After a short spell as a television researcher he worked for Harriet Harman and then Gordon Brown, becoming one of Brown's closest advisers and a Treasury special adviser from 1997 to 2002. He spent a year as a visiting scholar at Harvard and chaired the Treasury's Council of Economic Advisers before entering Parliament for Doncaster North in 2005.

He became a minister in 2006, joined the cabinet when Brown became prime minister in 2007, and in 2008 became the first Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change. In September 2010 he narrowly beat his brother David to the Labour leadership and led the opposition to the coalition government, but resigned after Labour's defeat in the 2015 general election.

Returning to the front bench under Keir Starmer, he became Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero after Labour's 2024 victory, and in July 2026 was appointed Foreign Secretary under Andy Burnham.