Ed Miliband's Rising Influence: Labour's Intellectual Heavyweight Emerges
Nature famously abhors a vacuum. When Morgan McSweeney departed government, leaving a significant gap where much of Keir Starmer's strategic thinking used to reside, it was inevitable that someone would fill that void. Increasingly, that void is being filled by Ed Miliband, whose influence within the Labour Party has grown substantially in recent weeks.
The Energy Secretary's Growing Stature
The energy secretary's prominence has expanded visibly, and not merely due to the escalating energy crisis in the Gulf region. The notion that Miliband has become the de facto prime minister – allegedly directing everything from Britain's potential involvement in the Iran conflict to the extent of its environmental policies – represents, on one level, another opposition attempt to undermine Starmer by portraying him as a weak leader manipulated by subordinates. While the reality is more nuanced, there's undeniable evidence that Miliband's stature has increased significantly.
Having quietly surpassed Angela Rayner last month as the membership's favorite cabinet minister, Miliband could likely win a leadership contest immediately if Labour MPs weren't currently postponing such considerations, recognizing that interrupting a global crisis for internal party elections would appear irrational. For now, the party's focus remains on maximizing their current leadership structure.
Why Miliband Rather Than Others?
Why has Miliband, rather than someone from Labour's formerly dominant right wing, emerged as this influential figure? The answer lies partly in the Greens' victory in Gorton and Denton, combined with the departure of McSweeney and his mentor Peter Mandelson, which is pulling Labour's center of gravity steadily leftward. However, the primary reason – as Michael Gove should understand, having employed similar strategies during crises – is that Miliband serves as the cabinet's resident deep thinker at a moment when substantial ideas have suddenly regained importance.
Ed Miliband represents an intellectual heavyweight precisely when such figures are desperately needed, as the vacuousness of recent years appears increasingly inadequate. What constitutes the new theory of economic growth if an oil shock renders existing models obsolete? How does Britain navigate an era of aggressively competing world powers, which will inevitably involve more sudden conflicts disrupting global supply chains? Can populism be contained when another recession would likely intensify its appeal?
The Return of Big Ideas
These monumental questions highlight how Labour's current answers – from Starmer's leadership to those proposed by Rayner, Wes Streeting, and Andy Burnham – appear strangely insufficient, resembling relics from a period when superior storytelling skills were considered paramount. This administration's apparent aversion to substantial ideas is often attributed to its Blair-era origins, but this interpretation misreads history for those too young to remember the actual circumstances.
The Gordon Brown administration where Miliband developed politically was intellectually voracious, widely read, and rigorously trained to analyze arguments from first principles. Tony Blair's inner circle, while more pragmatic, was never as hollow as critics suggested: it featured third-way theorists, intellectual pioneers within and outside cabinet connected to broader ideological ecosystems and international leftwing networks, plus a leader comfortable delivering major speeches explaining his philosophy.
The recent publication of former Labour cabinet minister Liam Byrne's book, Why Populists Are Winning and How to Beat Them – a commendable effort to generate fresh thinking based on seminars organized with thoughtful former Tory minister John Glen at Oxford's St Antony's College – serves as a reminder that ambitious junior politicians in both parties once produced idea-driven books to gain recognition, rather than waiting until leaving office.
The Challenge of Intellectual Politics
For the past fifteen years, substantial ideas within Labour have been associated either with embarrassing nerdiness – as if Westminster were a schoolyard where intelligence invited bullying, which roughly describes Miliband's experience as leader – or with the short-term excitement followed by electoral disaster exemplified by Corbynism. The prevailing trend has favored populists offering simple solutions: suggesting that matters were more complex merely earned one the label of elitist.
By summer 2024, Labour's campaign strategy assumed that nobody desired visionary thinking, and that discussing small, practical improvements under new management represented the only way to earn a weary electorate's reluctant trust. Perhaps this retail politics approach could have succeeded in an alternate reality with sufficient funding. Instead, America's era of anti-intellectualism has culminated in a self-defeating conflict with Iran, a third economic shock in six years, and the imminent threat of recession.
Starmer's Timing Challenge and Miliband's Preparedness
To be fair to Starmer, the last election arguably occurred too early for Labour, catching the party midway through its political renewal cycle: while it had completed the post-Corbyn cleanup, it hadn't yet refreshed itself intellectually. Entering office with limited ideological foundations, his government lacked time to develop coherent responses as successive crises left it reeling. Now, a new philosophical approach is essential.
Although Rachel Reeves's substantial Mais lecture last week demonstrated that Miliband isn't the only cabinet minister with a clear political philosophy, it's Miliband who assumed office with the most defined vision – having experienced similar circumstances before – of what he aimed to accomplish.
Miliband's Strengths and Limitations
This isn't to suggest Miliband is infallible. Those who have worked with him describe a tendency toward over-complication. He possesses a paradoxical ability to be both years ahead of his time – as when he identified in 2010 both the political significance of the financially "squeezed middle" and the post-crash desire for change – and somehow too far ahead to receive credit when others eventually recognize these trends. Not all his ideas are sound, and as a colleague, he can be challenging.
Yet arguably, this cabinet requires more intellectual friction, not less, to sharpen its thinking for the coming months. If substantial thinking is returning to favor, it's perhaps only because, amid the shattered remnants of what was once America's sphere of influence, we now witness precisely where the absence of such thinking leads.
