Alastair Campbell who was increasingly involved in the final weeks of the campaign, even attending meetings with Milibands inner circle wrote a punchy one nation speech for Chatham House. 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Had there been more references in the speech to the deficit, he would not have forgotten it. The battle that night would be whether the Liberal Democrats would choose to partner with Labour or the Conservatives. Hell yes, Im tough enough. Although, as one of his closest advisers later admitted: Its fair to say that if anyone had suggested he was about say Hell yes in the interview, I would have run across the room to stop him., As anticipated, the Conservatives began the short campaign with attacks on Milibands leadership and Labour borrowing, but Milibands team were buoyed by the Tories failure to gain traction. It was a form of collective denial., One hundred and seventy miles away, Miliband was sitting on a sofa in Doncaster with his wife Justine Thornton, Greg Beales and Stewart Wood. Many of Milibands advisers acknowledge that there were two sides to the Labour leader. Former Ed Miliband spokespersonJames Stewartand Sky News Political CorrespondentTamara Cohen. https://t.co/UMSrJLrwvb pic.twitter.com/AJPH4AY7FH, Andrea Jenkyns MP (@andreajenkyns) November 16, 2016. It was decided that the next of these meetings on 8 June 2014 had to produce a radical turning point in Milibands leadership. He was born on May 20, 1908, in Indiana, Pennsylvania, as the eldest child and only son of Alexander Maitland . The idea was to have some optimism, energy and light and raise peoples sights beyond the parliament. We had an astonishingly good first two weeks of the campaign, said one close adviser. Everything he says and does he does because he genuinely thinks its in Eds best interests.. [audioplayer src=http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_24_April_2014_v4.mp3 title=Dan Hodges and Marcus Roberts debate the state of Milibandism startat=47]. It gives them a sense of order. The games, the games. By the time of the meeting on 8 June, the atmosphere was toxic. Yet the attempt to humanise some rather abstract messages by telling stories about ordinary people such as Gareth, whom Miliband had met while walking in Hampstead Heath fell horribly flat. Miliband was forced to convene an emergency meeting at DPR as the team called his home on Dartmouth Park Road in north London to make a snap decision about a replacement. Indeed, it is becoming apparent that this has become the main Tory message in this election and you have regularly shown images from their posters and advertising designed to reinforce this attack. From self . She was the one who kept banging away at the second preferences. We would love to tell you why, but cant. Latest news, analysis and comment on French politics and beyond. A lot of people dont realise that it was Anna who was responsible for swinging that last handful of MPs over to Ed during the leadership election. The BBCs relentless focus on Scotland is potentially of huge political benefit not only to the SNP but also to the Conservative party. Ed represented the United Kingdom at the 2009 Copenhagen summit on climate change. It is a story of decisions deferred, of a senior team divided, and of a losing struggle to make the Labour leader electable. Former Press Secretary to the Prince of WalesMark Bolland ismarried toGuy Black, who sits in the House of Lords asBaron Black of Brentwood and is also executive director of the Telegraph Media Group. While Milibands media team is seen as one of the more effective arms of his operation, many Labour observers question whether it would survive the transition to Downing Street intact. Maybe. Ahead of a major foreign policy speech at Chatham House thinktank in London on 24 April, the tension in the team over how to respond to the SNP issue came to a head. One of Livermores allies is Tom Baldwin, former deputy political editor of the Times. Could Meghan and Harrys eviction overshadow the coronation? But the consensus was for Balls although, as a compromise, Miliband was asked to approach his brother one more time. Forget the hype, said one MP, the Labour movement is an alien planet to Ed. If we had run it through like a stick of rock it would have been impossible to forget.. White arrived at Ofcom via the British Embassy in Washington (where the couple married) and then Tony Blairs Downing Street. Baldwin is unpopular with his former colleagues in the parliamentary press pack, who regard him as excessively volatile. At five minutes to ten oclock on election night, moments before the exit poll was released, Labour headquarters was preparing to claim power, convinced that against the odds, they could combine with other parties to lock David Cameron out of Downing Street. Latest news, analysis and comment on elections in Europe and beyond. He insisted that they should confront these issues directly, or else the specific retail offers to the electorate that tested well in focus groups, such as the energy price freeze, would fall on deaf ears. One close adviser admitted that he was initially perplexed as to why posters were appearing all over English towns that depicted Miliband in the pocket of Alex Salmond. He was not quite sure in his head where he was, so when he got to the bit where the deficit should have been, he just started a different section. It was this team that secured the Labour leadership against the odds. Children:The pair have four children between them, aged 22, 20, 13 and 10 (the older two are Sylvesters step-children), and two cats. It was also proposed that Miliband would spend two days each week outside the Westminster bubble, speaking to voters all over the country, and suggested he approach prime ministers questions in a less confrontational manner. Exit polls predicting Labours heavy defeat are projected on to BBC Broadcasting House in London on election night. Thus, two brothers sat in Britains cabinet for the first time since the 1930s. Times have changed for the pair. But the one thing I would say about him is that hes one of the few people whos solely there for Ed. Its a wish list of vague commitments. One area that Henricson Bell focused on was policy. Hes the one who can pick up the phone to people in the White House., Wood was at Ed Milibands side from the beginning. Screengrabs, which appear to show him standing outside Tesco by Highbury Hall, began appearing on Twitter. Josie Rourke, Ed Milibands speaking coach, was not one of the people present in his hotel room after the 2014 Labour party conference speech. The party would be unable to have an honest debate about what had gone wrong if he remained. The prepared answer, broadly, was: I dont think every penny was well spent. There was just a sense that this is bad is there any way it could be wrong?. There are times when you have to say, We could get a good headline today. But after a while people started to say OK, Torsten, youve set up these 28 different policy working groups. Fixation with the aftermath of the election soon began to drown out everything else. When Miliband was weighing up the fateful decision to run against his brother, Wood was his sounding board. We talked about it a lot beforehand, and the strategy was clear. He is more likely to be found following his beloved Liverpool football team around the country than touring the television studios. Ed Miliband unveils Labour's pledges carved into a stone plinth in Hastings, on May 2. On 1 April, the Telegraph dedicated its front page to a letter, signed by 100 business leaders, which claimed that a Labour government would threaten jobs and deter investment. Tims the guy decid-ing who gets what job in government, says one MP. Stewart was ringing round people urging them to sign it., Wood is also one of the few members of Milibands team who does not enjoy the anonymity that comes with working the backrooms of politics. Even Tony Blair said Ed had been right to put inequality back on the agenda. There was no explosion, but the tension was horrible, one attendee said. If it was not David Cameron or George Osborne saying it, there was Nicola Sturgeon, Alex Salmond or Nick Clegg all using the same lines. In September 2014, on the eve of voting in Scotland on the ultimately unsuccessful referendum on independence from the United Kingdom, Miliband joined Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron and Liberal Democrat Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg in publishing a vow in the newspaper Daily Record to increase powers for Scotlands government should the referendum be rejected. OK, they werent exactly household names. The key issue they had to address was the point at which Labour fell so far behind the Tories that Labour would be unable to form a credible minority government. Latest news, analysis and comment on German politics and beyond. Thats three big personalities youve got there, said one, and No. Marc isnt massively political. Benedict Brogan,former deputy editor of the Telegraph, now director of group public affairs at Lloyds Banking Group, is married to the Department for Communities and Local Government Permanent SecretaryMelanie Dawes. He divides opinion more than any other member of Milibands circle. A couple of hours later we all trooped back in to talk about election strategy. Soon after Gordon [Brown] became PM he had his first meeting with George Bush, recalls a former Downing Street workmate of Wood. Instead, when an audience member asked him: Do you accept that when Labour was last in power, it overspent?, Miliband began his answer, No, I dont, to gasps from members of the audience. That Sunday, in a car park in Hastings, Miliband unveiled an 8ft 6in slab of limestone, into which had been carved Labours six election pledges. Samana Haq, who will shortly be head of news at the Ministry of Justice after eight years in the lobby as ITV News Westminster news editor, married Carl Dinnen,ITV political correspondent, earlier this year. Nigel and Diane Dodds, following his win at the 2015 general election | Charles McQuillan/Getty Images. There was no time to prep for conference, the speechwriter recalled. I can give you plenty of examples where the last Labour government did not spend money well and, as someone who believes that spending on health and education can change lives, it is incumbent on me to make sure that every pound is well spent. He explains: When Miliband was elected leader, he felt uncomfortable defending the Blair-Brown record. | Tom Clark, Why Labour lost the election and what it must do to win again | Letters, Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning, Ed Miliband shuts himself in his hotel bedroom after failing to mention the deficit in his 2014 party conference speech. But as the man charged with managing Milibands strategic interventions he has shown his worth,in particular over issues such as phone-hacking and the energy price freeze. Now he has to wait for the DUP, Germanys top diplomat wants to give foreign office a feminist revamp, Gove wades into culture wars with plan to save Tories. He is a man that cares more about a few more years in power than a few hundred years of a union that has served our country and served the world so well., Alexander thought it would work. Shes got better trade-craft than people realise., A former adviser agrees. 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