Ed Miliband has reasons to be cheerful

To be fair to Jeremy Corbyn, he wasn’t the first serving Labour leader to reject my request for an interview for GQ. So did Ed Miliband. The reasons may be different – Corbyn’s political, perhaps; Miliband’s, the fact that, at the time, I was helping him prepare for a general election campaign and he thought it would be odd if we had a rumbustious bust-up in print. But with the passing of time, a new, less buttoned-up Miliband is emerging, and now he was keen to talk, though hopeful I wouldn’t spend too long revisiting arguments of the past, when he worked for Gordon Brown and I for Tony Blair and he was known as “The Emissary From Planet Fuck” or the rows when he was leader, provoked by my feeling he didn’t defend New Labour’s record enough. It is three years since a life-changing election defeat.

One day, he thought he was going to be PM. The next, he was trying to work out what former future PMs do with the rest of their lives. He has remained an MP, but is also using his podcast, Reasons To Be Cheerful, to try to generate debate about big new ideas. Before our interview, I went to see him record the podcast in front of a live audience. They liked him and his ideas in a way the electorate did not in sufficient numbers when he needed them most. But he seemed happy enough. He is also more confident than I am that Labour is heading for power and relishing the prospect. He is not as fired up as I am about Brexit, but he is ready to take to the barricades against Donald Trump. And he remains as baffled as I am about why that bloody bacon sandwich became such a big thing.

So, Ed. What reasons to be cheerful did you find the day after you lost the election?

I didn’t feel that cheerful, actually. The truth is I felt a sense of shock.

You thought you were going to win?

Yeah. I wasn’t certain, but the polls coming in that day seemed quite positive. So no, I didn’t feel cheerful. You do feel the burden of leadership has been lifted. But yeah, it was pretty hard.

Do you ever get over it?

You move on, I think. I have moved on. But it took a year, really. The 2017 election was an inflection point because it meant the last election was not my election. I felt I could still make a contribution with ideas. I didn’t know how and it has taken me some time to work that out. There were things that mattered to me about the future of the country: inequality, what the post-financial crisis settlement would be. I still felt strongly about all that. You know in The West Wing, Arnie Vinick, the Republican candidate, he goes from losing an election to going to Starbucks the next day and they say, “What’s your name?” And he says, “Arnie”, and they say, “Coffee for Ernie.” And he’s sort of forgotten and he has a dentist’s appointment in his diary and that’s about it. It’s slightly like that. You are going at 100mph, every minute of the day, and then you crash.

So if leader of Labour is like being Man City, where is “Doncaster backbench MP doing a podcast and trying to stay relevant”?

I don’t think I would make that comparison.

But as someone said when you were recording the podcast, you could have been at Chequers or heading off to China.

For the first year or two, that is quite painful. Now, it bounces off me. Before, I’d have felt regretful and would’ve ruminated.

The audience liked you and your ideas in a way maybe they didn’t before. Is this you trying to enjoy being popular?

I am not sure it’s about being popular. It is nice to be liked. It is more about the big ideas I still care about and how do I find a medium for them? Also, it allows me some self-reflection. I felt my analysis was big – inequality, stagnant wages, next generation doing worse than the last – but my response was not big enough, not bold enough.

What would you have done differently and would it have helped you win?

Might have done. I think I’d have been clearer about the mission, bolder in solutions, tuition fees, rail nationalisation. I am proud of the 2015 manifesto and some of it has been adopted by both parties. But this is why I give some credit to Jeremy Corbyn on this. People want bigger, bolder answers to the problems that exist. I felt as leader: “My analysis is big; are the answers big enough?”

What is the boldness in what Corbyn is saying? In a sense, it is regression to some old-fashioned ideas.

Free university education.

**Sure, lots of things people would like. **

They’ve said how they would pay for it.

Have they? I thought this idea that the manifesto was fully costed was, if I may say so, a brilliant piece of spin.

But what makes you say that? They published a whole set of figures.

I don’t believe it added up to a coherent plan.

I don’t agree with that.

**You felt it was deliverable. **

Yes.

‘This idea about cheerful thinking... it’s a think-tank to help show people things can be better’

And if he goes to the next election on that manifesto he will win?

Yes, I think you can, building on it. He can’t do it alone and part of my responsibility, and that of anyone who wants a Labour government, is to help him come up with the ideas to change the country. Part of what I am trying to do with the podcast is be a kind of facilitator, provide a platform for those ideas.

So it’s a think-tank for the modern age?

Yes.

It is entertainment, ultimately.

No. It is maybe entertaining, but it is about how you get an audience and how you get people to know about – and become advocates for – big ideas. Universal basic income, where you replace the complicated means-tested social security system with one payment to everyone, lots of people advocate it for an age of tech and disappearing jobs – we had 100,000 downloads of our podcast on that. Most think-tanks would dream of that kind of engagement with an idea. This idea about cheerful thinking, a digital platform for people to present their ideas, organise events around the country, that is what I am focused on building, a digital think-tank for the modern age that can help show people things can be better, the world can be different.

They also want to see political leadership with a plan to deliver that. I accept Jeremy Corbyn...

Come on, you were surprised.

I was surprised Theresa May was as terrible as she was. I was surprised the Lib Dems imploded. I was surprised he campaigned as well as he did. That, to be frank, made me very angry he had not campaigned like that in the referendum.

If we had sat here a year ago, and I said to you he was going to get 40 per cent of the vote, you would have sent me packing.

Probably. But what happened out of the result is this sense we won, when we didn’t, and I haven’t seen much since the election that takes him to the next level.

The fundamental point about our time is to understand why he did so much better than you or I expected, and possibly he expected as well. And that is because he was giving people a sense that he had answers big enough, bold enough, honest enough, for the moment we are in. Whether you agree with all the answers or not, that is fundamentally the insight he has.

And we will do everything people want with a bit more tax on the rich and on business? I don’t think that’s credible.

Hang on a minute. Let’s take the corporation tax. It is falling to 17 per cent...

I am not saying don’t increase tax; I’m saying, “Can you do all of these things with a bit more tax on the rich?”

You can’t do everything, but you can do what he set out. Humility is important and we should give him credit for what he has achieved. [Pollster] Peter Kellner wrote after the election that all the rules had been torn up. Tony Blair said the same, the idea there was only one way to win, a certain version of the political centre.

I put it as part of the same phenomenon as Trump...

And Brexit.

Definitely Brexit, people looking for something clear and certain. My point is whether it is credible and whether it goes with the grain of what you and I through our adult lives have believed to be the Labour Party. I sometimes feel like an alien inside my own party.

Why do you feel that? About the agenda? Most of Europe nationalised rail. I am sure I had conversations with you when you said the rail network is a nightmare. You are not against that.

I am against him saying he can’t do it inside the EU.

But why do you feel alienated? This is an interesting thing...

I think they are quite sectarian in their politics. I had a bit of a eureka moment when I did Question Time with John McDonnell and realised he loathes people like me way more than the Tories.

Isn’t that an extreme analysis?

We have argued before on this, that Labour has conspired to make what we did in government a negative. [Journalist] Michael White calls it “the Corbyn-Dacre axis”. People say shouldn’t we have a new political party? I think we’ve got one, and I don’t feel totally at home with it.

I believe in the Labour Party looking outwards, not inwards. I think Jeremy believes that too.

He might. I am not sure about the people around him.

Take Momentum. Lots is said and written and no doubt again not everything they do is right. But if you went to the party conference, they had this project, “The World Transformed” – ideas for the future. These young people were not interested in deselections, but ideas.

Why doesn’t he just put this deselection thing to bed then?

That is a matter for him. Listen, I went to Australia in 2015 during the leadership election to get away from it all and ignore your texts [urging him to speak out against Corbyn] and I came back and saw this guy who said he was about to vote for Jeremy.

I asked him why and he said, “I couldn’t forgive myself if I didn’t.” What does that say? The 2015 leadership election felt like, “Do we want a more right-wing version of Ed or a more left-wing version of Ed?” – a more radical, bolder version – and that is what he was offering. That is why he won and that does speak to the moment.

It may speak to the moment, but is he going to win?

I can’t guarantee that. It is not in the bag, but it certainly could happen.

It could. But we are up against a government as bad as this, in terms of its abject failure to deal with the big issues, the division, the incompetence, yet we are neck and neck and May is often viewed as better than him.

That is the fog of Brexit. Let me talk to you about my constituency. We were one of the top five or six for Leave, 71, 72 per cent. People haven’t changed their minds. That is more or less reflected in the polls. People voted for Brexit, yes about immigration, but also for much deeper reasons. It is like the woman who said to me, “I voted for a new beginning for my grandchildren.”

And is Brexit going to deliver it?

I don’t think it will.

So should we not...

...Tell them they were wrong?

No, but explain there is a real possibility that what they voted for and what parliament is enacting will make their lives worse, not better.

I just don’t think that is going to work. I don’t think you can overestimate the extent to which the driver for this referendum was a sense of political alienation, alienation from the political class.

I accept that.

But then the political class comes along and says, “Right, this is the way you voted, nothing has changed in the sense of delivering the change you want, and we are going to come along and say, ‘Do it again.’” Let me ask you this: if it had been 52-48 the other way and Nigel Farage was out there saying let’s rerun this referendum, what would you be saying?

Guaranteed Farage would be.

Right, and what would you be saying?

**That he would have to win the argument because democracy doesn’t die on one vote. **

You wouldn’t say rerun the referendum.

**I don’t see this as rerunning it. **

It is really, though.

I think, as we know more and the reality of Brexit becomes clearer, then the public are entitled to change their mind if they want to.

Remember, I am the guy who stood on a manifesto saying no to having the referendum. I also campaigned full-throatedly for Remain.

What do you think this podcast thing says about what people think they need in the political debate?

Big ideas to make the country better, to make it fairer.

And why is parliament not doing it?

Because of the fog of Brexit. It is actually what Tony warned me would happen, in 2015, when I was wondering what to do on the referendum. He said it would consume every waking minute of what you do. If you are my constituents, maybe you are a leaver thinking, “Get on with it,” but they also voted for things to be different and why has that not happened? Why has May not delivered her “on the steps” vision? Because she is caught between free-market conservatism and its failure. That is where we are.

Why am I cheerful? Short-term, with Brexit and Trump, bad. But medium-term, it is all up for grabs. When you and I were in the Labour government in the Nineties, we did really good things, but the script of where we were going, we had a sense of it – accept a lot of the economic settlement of the past, big social push. But the script for the next ten, 15 years is not written. It is so up for grabs. That is what Trump did. People are searching for, “What does the world look like with this inequality, this failure of free markets?” If the Tories are to revive, they’ll have to take this much more seriously, go much deeper than David Cameron did.

‘Hatred can cloud judgement. I don’t have personal animus towards David Cameron’

What do you think about the way Cameron has just vanished? And what sense did you get of him?

Hatred can cloud judgement, so I don’t have personal animus. He’ll be remembered for Brexit and I fear that what happened with Brexit was because of who he was as a person. He felt he would win. He felt he would persuade people. He had done it in Scotland; he had done it with me. Now, the country is dealing with the consequences.

Do you have any doubts about your own buggering off [resigning as leader]?

Not really.

Or about the changes you made that helped Jeremy become leader and change the party?

Not really. Even the Tories were having the membership elect the leader. Jeremy won in every section. And the £3 people – it was the right of the party saying we have to have these registered supporters to counteract the unions. Also, in a way, if you attribute it to the mechanics, you miss the bigger picture: what was it about his project that spoke to people?

I am not suggesting this is your purpose or mission, but if he did become prime minister, would you be happy to go back into the cabinet?

I think that is for the future. I don’t know. I want to contribute in some way, but I am happy with what I am doing. I am in the ideas business, with the full freedom that gives me.

Did you enjoy being leader?

Yeah, but it had its moments.

Were there times you regretted it?

No. It was a huge privilege. That may be a cliché but it is true. I never regretted it. My friend [film director] Paul Greengrass always used to say very few people get the chance to talk to the country about its condition, the challenges, and I had the platform to do that. I took that seriously. Family-wise, it was difficult, more difficult than I realised. You are absent even when you’re present.

When you have been reflecting, have you ever wondered had [your brother] David done it could he have done a better job?

Not in the sense I ever think I shouldn’t have stood. I was offering something different. You won’t love this, but I was the “moving on from New Labour” candidate. Because you’ll know from our conversations before 2010 that I did not arrive at this suddenly, for electoral reasons, as it were.

‘I am less interested in my place in history than what I can do to make it happen’

So if Jeremy does win, and he does this agenda, a bit like we would say Neil [Kinnock] played a big role in setting up for Tony to win…

If Jeremy leads a radical government that changes the country then maybe I laid some of the foundations. I am less interested in my place in history than what I can do to make that happen.

If Trump comes on a state visit...

I am on the demo. Definitely.

And you wouldn’t go to the state banquet?

No.

Would Jeremy?

That is a matter for him. It’s a tricky decision. He would have to meet him. Are you on the demo?

I will be very agitated. I can’t even watch him on TV. I read his State Of The Union Address, didn’t watch. He is the » » president, Brexit is happening, he is there for three or seven years. Is there a danger we send a message not just to Trump but to America and that damages Britain ultimately?

Not at all, because you are sending a message about what’s acceptable in a leader in terms of values. Let’s say he comes, there are no protests, all fine, it sends a message that he is popular around the world. He says he is popular in Britain already. Er, no, you’re not. And what is objectionable about him? His racism. His misogyny. His peculiar relationship with Russia and most of all with the truth. There is a line.

If you were the leader, would you go?

I don’t know.

We had state visits for some rum leaders.

Our relationship with America is so important and the response to America we project has an impact there. I don’t think you can say, “Oh, the Chinese came here, why are there demos for Trump?” Because we know the Chinese have different values. We are not joined at the hip historically the way we are with the Americans. He will want to say it is a great success.

What does it say about the US that they elected him?

It is similar to Brexit. Read about the Midwest, where he won. It was economic. No doubt there is racism among some people. But two days before the election, his last big ad was taken as being anti-Semitic because he attacked three Jews, but it was his message that the global elite have taken your jobs, closed the factories and it’s time to take back the country. This has been coming for a long time. The same kind of discontent that drove Brexit drove Trump.

I argued with Tony about this, but how much do you fear there is something in Trump that means the comparisons with the Thirties are not far-fetched?

What he is doing day by day, on [special counsel] Mueller, someone tweeted about it becoming a banana republic pretty quickly. It is pretty scary – it is what Nixon did, but more skilfully.

Has he got fascist tendencies?

I think he has very scary authoritarian tendencies, definitely – by any means necessary. I think he is pretty scary. But not popular, either. There is all kinds of bullshit about that but he has low approval ratings.

‘There are people in the media trying to kill you every single day. That is their job’

You have been very high-profile for a long time, now you are doing a podcast and tweeting a bit and people think you are a different person.

What is the reason? Two things. The constraints of the job. You can’t say, “Donald Trump is a moron.” Even Jeremy hasn’t. But also, the self-imposed constraints. I probably was too cautious. If you are Labour leader, you feel you are operating in a political war zone. There are people in the media trying to kill you every day. They wake up in the morning, that is their job – they are told by Rupert Murdoch. He told them they were not tough enough. So you parse every word, [don’t swear or] it becomes, “Ed Miliband in foul-mouthed rant.” I didn’t feel I was trapped, but maybe it is what comes across. It is hard to see yourself as others see you.

I was talking to the audience coming out of your recording and they said you were natural; when you were leader they said you were weird.

What do you think it is down to?

The extent of the scrutiny. Maybe it subconsciously makes you change and you get defensive when people are looking for something non-defensive. Macron, we haven’t talked about him. He is the other political phenomenon at the moment.

He has the sort of “change”, “outsider” thing that a Corbyn or Trump or Brexit has. A political outsider. There is a crisis for social democratic parties. The French got six per cent. The Dutch got six. It is partly about whether you are the managers of globalisation to make it nicer or whether you can offer something different.

Is Jeremy bright?

Yeah. What are you getting at?

I want my leaders to be very bright, intellectually.

Principled, integrity, someone who is on to the important issues.

You are going for new ideas. He seems to pride himself on not changing his mind. Is there a lack of basic curiosity?

Oh, come on. He is leader of the Labour Party. You know what that is like.

He is very good at dealing with the stuff, amazingly calm, it all bounces off him, that is a real quality. But how you explore the world and come up with ideas – there is no curiosity.

I’m not sure that’s fair. People do leadership in different ways. What he is offering is principle and integrity, and that is really important.

The other interesting thing is what sticks. What does it say about our world that the wretched bacon sandwich stuck?

An image speaks a million words.

But why did that one speak so many million words?

What do you think?

The other night when it was mentioned, every single person...

...Laughed.

And knew about it and remembered it and won’t remember your speeches about inequality.

I don’t think that is why I lost.

No, any more than the Sheffield rally lost Neil the election. But it is weird what sticks.

Built up by the media – particularly funny picture. Three months after the election if you had raised it I would have felt pained, but now... [shrugs].

I enjoyed your funny story [on the podcast] about me sending you the wrong text.

I got that wrong. Rory [Alastair’s son] sent you a text about my wedding suit saying, “Why does Ed look like a reformed football hooligan?” and you said, “Maybe he has a tattoo on his arse.” It was meant for him but you sent it to me. I’m in the car with Justine, meant to be the happiest day of my life, and I tell her maybe Alastair Campbell’s phone has been hacked. I then send you a message saying, “Have you been hacked?” You fessed up. It was nicer than some of the texts you sent me during the leadership election.

Good to talk to you. I wish Jeremy had, though.

I can understand why he didn’t. He’d have worried you would really go for him.

But he could say what he likes.

If George Galloway had asked to interview Tony back in 1994, what would you have said?

**George Galloway? Is that how they see me **

OK, a bad comparison perhaps, but you get my point.