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Special Adviser
In 1992, after graduating from the University of Oxford, Miliband
began his working career in the media as a researcher to co-presenter Andrew Rawnsley in the Channel 4 show A Week in Politics.[14] In 1993,
Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury Harriet Harman approached Rawnsley to recruit Miliband as her
policy researcher and speechwriter.
[15] At the time,
Yvette Cooper also worked for Harman as part of Labour's Shadow Treasury team.
In 1994, when Harriet Harman was moved by the
newly elected Labour Leader Tony Blair to become
Shadow Secretary of State for Employment,
Miliband stayed on in the Shadow Treasury team and was promoted to work for Shadow ChancellorGordon Brown.[16] In 1995, with encouragement from Gordon Brown, Miliband took time out from his job to study at the London School of Economics, where he obtained a Masters in Economics.[12] After Labour's
1997 landslide victory, Miliband was appointed as a special adviser to Chancellor Gordon Brown from 1997 to 2002.
[17]
In early 1999, Gordon Brown gave Miliband the task of working with Scottish Labour's Election Co-ordinator
Douglas Alexander to help overturn the
Scottish National Party's opinion poll lead in the run-up to the first devolved
Scottish Parliament election.
[18] He was intimately involved in the process of building Labour's election manifesto, initially doing so in an informal capacity,
[19] until he was spotted leaving the
Scottish Labour Party's headquarters on the night that a key policy meeting was held, involving the
Scottish Secretary Donald Dewar and senior party officials, to consider the party's election strategy and details of Labour's manifesto. To avoid any perceived conflict of interest, Miliband temporarily resigned from his post as a Special Adviser at the Treasury to work on the Scottish election campaign full-time.
[20] It was reported that also part of Miliband's Scottish election role was to take charge of Labour's media rebuttal operation. Labour went on to become the largest party in the
Scottish Parliament following the election.
[21]
Harvard
On 25 July 2002, it was announced that Miliband would take a 12-month unpaid sabbatical from HM Treasury to be a visiting scholar at the Center for European Studies of Harvard University for two semesters.[22] He spent his time at Harvard teaching economics,[23] and stayed there after September 2003 for an additional semester teaching a course titled "What's Left? The Politics of Social Justice".[24] During this time, he was granted "access" to Senator John Kerry and reported to Brown on the Presidential hopeful's progress.
[25] After Miliband returned to the UK in January 2004 Gordon Brown appointed him
Chairman of HM Treasury's Council of Economic Advisers as a replacement for Ed Balls, with specific responsibility for directing the UK's long-term economic planning.[26]
Parliament
In early 2005, Miliband resigned his advisory role to HM Treasury to stand for election. Kevin Hughes, then the Labour MP for Doncaster North, announced in February of that year that he would be standing down at the next election due to being diagnosed with motor neurone disease. Miliband applied for selection to be the candidate in the safe Labour seat and won, beating off a close challenge from
Michael Dugher, then a
SPAD to
Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon.
[27] Dugher would later become an MP in 2010.
Gordon Brown visited Doncaster North during the general election campaign to support his former adviser.
[28] Miliband was elected to
Parliament on
5 May 2005, with over 50% of the vote and a majority of 12,656. He made his
maiden speech in the
House of Commons on 23 May, responding to comments made by future
SpeakerJohn Bercow.
[29] In Tony Blair's cabinet reshuffle in May 2006, he was made the
Parliamentary Secretary to the Cabinet Office, as Minister for the Third Sector, with responsibility for voluntary and charity organisations.
[30][31]
