David Miliband: I have had a proper job. I’ve been our Foreign Secretary

Published: 17 June 2010
by RICHARD OSLEY

THE New Journal asked Labour leadership candidate David Miliband why he and his rivals for the party’s top role had never done a job outside politics – and was firmly told to stop “denigrating politicians”.

Mr Miliband was visiting Haverstock School in Chalk Farm, his former secondary school, yesterday (Wednesday) morning. He met pupils and spoke about the diverse nature of comprehensive education, revealing excitedly his first childhood ambition: to become a bus conductor. 

That dream did not come to fruition and Mr Miliband, who lives in Primrose Hill, instead went on to Oxford University before becoming a special advisor, an MP and then a minister. His most recent job was Foreign Secretary.

The other contenders in the leadership contest, including his brother Ed, another former Haverstock pupil, had similar career paths.

Asked by the New Journal whether he had ever had a “proper job” – one outside the political career train – he said: “I think Foreign Secretary is a proper job. The 24-hour nature of politics nowadays means you have to have lots of different skills, and employment experience is only one of them. 

“Things are different now and what you suggest sounds like a harping back to a retired 1930s Tory. I’m not going to be part of the denigration of politicians: to say you can’t do this because you didn’t do that. 

“There is too much denigrating of hard-working politicians at all levels and I have a lot of respect for people who work as activists, leaflet stuffers, local councillors and MPs.”

He guffawed with laughter when it was suggested that Haverstock had become the “Labour Eton” – as London mayoral hopeful Oona King also passed through its doors as a teenager.

“I haven’t heard of that before,” he said. “It wasn’t like Eton when I was here. Maybe with the improved facilities, it’s a bit more like Eton. 

“I have good memories of Haverstock. It didn’t allow you to rest for second best. It brought the best out of you. It wasn’t all plain sailing: I famously got a D for physics.”

He had a private meeting with Haverstock headteacher John Dowd in his office after seeing photos of the school in the 1970s and early 1980s – then a redbrick Victorian building. It was revamped with a complete rebuild four years ago.

Mr Miliband met the school’s debating team and dropped in on a media studies lesson where pupils were learning about the advance of new media.

He told students: “I’m surprised to find myself where I am. I only decided to become a politician between 1994 and 2001. I was sort of an advisor, first of all in opposition and then in government: a civil servant. 

“In 2001, an MP retired in South Shields and friends said: ‘You should go for it.’ I said: ‘Nah, I’m not sure if that’s for me. I’m more a backroom person.’ And then I had a brilliant conversation with one of my colleagues. They said: ‘Life is an adventure, you’ve got to go for it’. 

“I think that’s an important principle. When people ask me for advice, I say: when opportunities come up, you should go and take them.”

Famous Five? Is that all there is? 

ILLTYD HARRINGTON: ‘AS I PLEASE’

The secret conclave of aged cardinals which elects the Pope is proving less mysterious than Labour’s search for a new leader. At least the Men of God have the Holy Ghost to advise them. 

Inexplicably, Ed Miliband calls for the “widest possible discussion’’. There really is nothing to talk about. 

Ed wrote Labour’s 2010 manifesto and, like his brother David, was one of Blair’s principal policy advisors, and recipient of his nepotism. 

Ed Balls, Gordon Brown’s right and left-hand man, has the tone and demeanour of one of the penitenti at the trial of a Mafia don.

Andy Burnham, ex-health secretary, seemingly a nice man, has taken to holding a placard proving his working-class credentials. 

Then Diane Abbott, black, female, single-parent and on the left. Once a week, a friend on the sofa to Michael Portillo. 

Where was all the new blood, champing at the bit to challenge the unnatural coalition?  Only one of the five joined the 1.7 million of us who went on the march against the war and none of them uses the word socialism. 

The shock and horror coming out of Whitehall daily reminds me not of Old Mother Hubbard, who went to the cupboard and found it bare, but rather of plucky Oliver Twist, who stood up to the forces of parsimony and told Mr Bumble: “Please Sir – I want some more!” 

That took some nerve. But such an alternative vision needs a political will of steel, not the lacklustre of this “famous five”. 

Better to read the original Enid Blyton.