David Miliband talking about return to frontline politics

Former Labour “big beast” David Miliband has hinted at a return to frontline politics more than a decade after losing his bid for the party leadership to his brother.

Speaking on LBC’s Tonight with Andrew Marr yesterday, Miliband said that whether he might stand as a Labour MP once again had “not been decided yet”. But the former foreign secretary added that the party had “put itself into a position where it’s got good people leading it” and that he was “enthusiastic” about Keir Starmer.

“He’s taken us from unelectability – the worst election results from 1935 – to being more than contenders now, for a serious general election,” said Miliband, who lost his own bid for the party leadership to his younger brother, Ed Miliband.

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Until that 2010 defeat, the older Miliband had enjoyed a “heady” ascent in politics, said The New Statesman. After running the No. 10 policy unit during Tony Blair’s first term as prime minister, he “became an MP in 2001, was made a junior minister within a year and was elevated to the cabinet after Blair’s 2005 re-election”. Two years later, Miliband was made foreign secretary and also held “an unofficial title” as “Labour’s leader in waiting, and the only man thought capable of toppling Gordon Brown”, the magazine added.

But after his brother took the top job, Miliband refused to serve in the shadow cabinet, before quitting as MP for South Shields in 2013 to head up a New York-based humanitarian charity, the International Rescue Committee.

Amid talk that he may now return to the UK and politics, senior Labour sources told HuffPost said that “initial conversations with Miliband may have taken place”, although “there was no imminent prospect of him being a candidate at the next election”, due in 2024 or 2025.

However, an insider warned that Miliband’s return would “create endless speculation as to his role, as well as huge resentment from those who didn’t just disappear for a decade”.

Another added: “It’s very David Miliband that now we look like we might win he’s suddenly ‘ready’ to come back.”