David Miliband

Who is David Miliband?

David Wright Miliband is a former British Labour Party politician who was the Member of Parliament for South Shields from 2001 to 2013, and was the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs from 2007 to 2010. He is the elder son of the late Marxist theorist Ralph Miliband. He and his brother, the current Leader of the Labour Party Ed Miliband, were the first siblings to sit in the Cabinet simultaneously since Edward, Lord Stanley, and Oliver Stanley in 1938.

Born in London, Miliband studied at Oxford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he started his career at the Institute for Public Policy Research. Aged 29 he became Tony Blair's Head of Policy whilst the Labour Party was in opposition, and he was a major contributor to Labour's manifesto for the 1997 election which brought the party to power in a landslide victory. Blair subsequently made him head of the Prime Minister's Policy Unit from 1997 to 2001, at which point Miliband was elected to Parliament for the seat of South Shields.