Dale in GQ: A Profile of the Milibands

I make my debut as a contributor to GQ Magazine in the new issue (November). I have written an extended profile of David and Ed Miliband. Having never written a piece like this before, I don't mind admitting I found it quite daunting. The main problem was the timing. Because of the print deadlines I had to file it in mid August, so in theory it could have been very out of date by now. Luckily, events have been kind to me and if anything it is more accurate today than it was at the time.

The article looks at both the Miliband brothers and seeks to assess which of them is the more talented, and likely to get to the top. I don't mind admitting that I found them both hugely engaging characters and you might be surprised at how positively I have written about them both. I suspect they feared a hatchet job. Anyway, here are a few snippets...

It’s every politician’s dream. Imagine it. You appear on BBC’s Question Time, get mercilessly harangued by a beautiful young woman who is so impressed by your erudite answer that she sends a note to your office the next day asking you out on a date. This sort of thing doesn’t happen in real political life … unless you happen to be called Ed Miliband. While brother David hogs the headlines and is touted as a Prime Minister in waiting, Ed has hunkered down, got on with his job, made many friends in all sections of the Labour Party and just as importantly avoided making too many enemies.

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Miliband and his violinist wife Louise Shackleton had already adopted one child, Isaac, in 2004. They chose to go to America to do so in order to avoid the intrusion of the British tabloid press and because adopting new born babies in this country is notoriously difficult. Nevertheless, the tabloids made every effort to seek out the baby’s birth mother, something which rankles with Miliband even now. He gives the distinct impression to friends that it wouldn’t take much to give up politics if the intrusion into his family life became too wearing. All fathers are devoted to their children, but with David Miliband this devotion borders on an obsession – something not uncommon in the fathers of adopted children. There’s that subconscious need to try just that little bit harder than normal fathers. He knows the toll his career may take on his kids, and older son Isaac has already started to notice his father’s long absences brought on by the demands of his job. “Daddy stay, Daddy stay!” he implored his father recently, as David Miliband was about to leave his South Shields home to travel down to London on a Monday morning. “Give Daddy a kiss goodbye,” said the doting Dad. “No. Daddy stay, Daddy stay,” pleaded Isaac. It was all David Miliband could do to tear himself away and walk out the door.

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The ‘geek’label is a difficult one to shake off, especially for the older Miliband. One Labour MP told me: “David has got the worst of all worlds. He’s too geeky for the Home Counties Labour people but also too geeky for the Labour heartlands”. His haircut and dress sense add weight to a slight sense of otherworldliness. He’s not quite on Planet Redwood but he needs to ditch the striped ties and add a bit of colour to what some perceive – unfairly - as a slightly monochrome personality. When David Miliband first joined the Cabinet Office under John Prescott’s tutelage, Prescott introduced him to the Department’s staff with the words: “The Mekon has landed”.

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While their father was an idealist and a benign ideologue, the sons decided that they would rather put theory into practice. There was only one vehicle for that - the Labour Party. Labour historian Brian Brivati thinks it goes further, and that the notion that we all need to find a way of rejecting our parents or at least superceding them, is at least subconsciously at play here. “They were rejecting the route of transformatory Trotskyite politics and accepted the parliamentary road and gradualism” he says. “In a way that was a rebellion in their own family, a rebellion against the parental millieu.”

Rebellion or not, former Labour leader Michael Foot, now 95 years old, says: “Ralph was incredibly proud of who they were and what they have done, but would like them to have been a little more left wing.” When you ask the Milibands what their father, who died in 1994, would have of their Cabinet careers, both look wistful, as if their main regret in life is that their father died before he could share in their success.

One Labour MP thinks their background gave them the intellectual rigour to succeed. “Marxism is a bit like Christianity. It gives you the intellectual discipline which sets you up for any kind of politics. What it doesn’t give you is an emotional link to the Labour Party,” he says, hinting that the Milibands, like Tony Blair before them, have a slightly detached and unemotional view of their own party. To them it’s a vehicle, rather than a way of life.

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To get on in politics you need the hide of a rhino and the social skills of a butterfly. The jury seems to be out as to whether either Miliband cuts the ice when it comes to gladhanding the various constituent parts of the Labour Party who get to vote in a leadership election. A friend of both the brothers has bad news for Ed, who he says is the “less socially accomplished of the two.” He adds: “If there’s a room to work, Ed will get trapped in a conversation he’s interested in, wheareas David will work the room relentlessly.” A Blairite Labour Minister concurs. “Ed carries on the Brownite tradition of not deigning to speak to anyone he doesn’t regard as a potential equal. David makes more of an effort. I can’t imagine having a pint with Ed.” In a way, this illustrates the continuing divide between the Blairites and the Brownites. While the Blairite minister reckons Ed is a little aloof, there are plenty of witnesses to him leading the late night singing around the piano at party conferences and enjoying letting his hair down.

Ed Miliband has also gained the respect of trade union leaders, whose members still have a third of the votes in a leadership election. At a recent Labour Party Policy Forum he negotiated with the union general secretaries. One Labour Minister who was present said: “He was much better, by that I mean steely and tough, than everyone expected. They were furious with him but he got their respect.”

The Miliband brothers are also living examples of the fact that the age of tribal politics is closing. The fact that party politics is now conducted entirely on the central ground plays into their hands. They’re not especially interested in the old style arguments of left versus right. If the Tories agree with them they regard it as a plus. They have made it their business to cultivate friends in the Tory Party – people like Ed Vaizey, who was just ahead of Ed Miliband at Oxford and has a high regard for him. “He has one of those faces which make you instantly like him,” says Vaizey. “He’ll happily have a gossip with you, but he knows there’s a line which you don’t cross.”

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Opinion is sharply divided both in the Labour Party and the Westminster Village about which Miliband is more likely to become leader of the Labour Party. There’s little doubt that in the current climate David is the better placed – he’s been tested and emerged with his reputation enhanced. He’s given the matter of leadership a good deal of thought and knows what needs to be done.

Ed, on the other hand, has only recently emerged from his older brother’s shadow, and realized that he too has his chance for greatness. The question is: does he want it as much as his older brother?

Anyway, if you'd like to read the whole piece, I am afraid you'll have to fork out £3.80!