Edward Samuel Miliband, commonly known as Ed Miliband, is a British Labour Party politician born on 24 December 1969 in Fitzrovia, London.

He is the son of Ralph Miliband, a Belgian-born Marxist sociologist and intellectual of Polish Jewish descent who fled Nazi-occupied Belgium during the Second World War, and Marion Kozak, a Polish-born human rights campaigner and academic who survived the Holocaust after being sheltered by a Catholic family in Poland.

Raised in a politically engaged household in north London, particularly Primrose Hill, Miliband grew up immersed in discussions of left-wing politics and social justice.

He attended Haverstock Comprehensive School before studying Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and later completing a master’s degree in economics at the London School of Economics.

He has been the Member of Parliament for Doncaster North since 2005 and currently serves as Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, a role he assumed in July 2026.

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    Siblings

    Ed has one sibling, an older brother named David Wright Miliband, born on 15 July 1965.

    The two brothers shared a close upbringing in a household shaped by their parents’ experiences as Jewish refugees and their father’s academic work.

    Both attended the same state comprehensive school in north London and went on to study Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford, with David preceding Ed by several years.

    Their early lives involved similar paths into Labour politics, though they later aligned with different figures within the party – David more closely associated with Tony Blair and Ed with Gordon Brown.

    The relationship between the brothers became highly public during the 2010 Labour leadership contest, in which Ed narrowly defeated David.

    David subsequently chose not to serve in his brother’s shadow cabinet and later left frontline British politics, resigning as an MP in 2013 to become president and chief executive of the International Rescue Committee, an international humanitarian organisation based in New York.

    Ed Miliband and his brother David PHOTO/Independent

    Career

    Miliband began his professional life after university with brief work as a television journalist before entering Labour Party politics as a researcher, including roles supporting figures such as Harriet Harman.

    He later became a special adviser and close confidant of Gordon Brown while Brown served as Chancellor of the Exchequer, chairing the Treasury’s Council of Economic Advisers.

    Elected as MP for Doncaster North in the 2005 general election, he quickly rose in government.

    Under Prime Minister Gordon Brown he was appointed Minister for the Cabinet Office and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster in 2007, making him and his brother David—then Foreign Secretary—the first siblings to serve simultaneously in a British Cabinet since 1938.

    In October 2008 he became the first Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, a position in which he oversaw the passage of the Climate Change Act 2008, which established the United Kingdom as the first country to set legally binding long-term emissions reduction targets.

    Following Labour’s defeat in the 2010 general election, Miliband stood in the subsequent party leadership contest and won a narrow victory over his brother David and other candidates, becoming Leader of the Labour Party and Leader of the Opposition from 2010 to 2015.

    After Labour’s loss in the 2015 general election he resigned the leadership and spent several years on the backbenches, focusing on constituency work and external commissions on housing and environmental justice.

    He returned to the frontbench in 2020 as Shadow Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, later becoming Shadow Secretary of State for Energy and Net Zero.

    After Labour’s victory in the 2024 general election he was appointed Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, holding the post until July 2026, when he was named Foreign Secretary.

    Accolades

    Miliband’s most prominent political achievement remains his election as Leader of the Labour Party in 2010, making him one of the youngest leaders of a major British party in modern times and the first to have defeated a sibling for the role.

    As the inaugural Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change he played a central part in enacting the Climate Change Act 2008, widely regarded as a landmark piece of environmental legislation that influenced subsequent climate policy both in the United Kingdom and internationally.

    His later return to senior government office as Energy Secretary in 2024 and Foreign Secretary in 2026 underscores a sustained career of high-level service spanning more than two decades in Parliament.