LONDON – For months, Ed Miliband has been Andy Burnham’s most powerful and important friend in Westminster.
Now, as Burnham prepares to enter Downing Street on Monday, what to do with Miliband may be his biggest problem.
More than a decade after Labor leader Miliband suffered a crushing defeat in the 2015 UK general election, he has emerged as a kingpin in Burnham’s ouster – and is now looking to turn his current role as energy secretary into something bigger under Burnham.
Miliband has been talking to Burnham behind the scenes since early 2026, according to two people familiar with the relationship between the men, andhe publicly called on Burnham to return to Westminsterearly January. In April he was – accordingfor the reporthe has never been rejected by Miliband’s team – the first Cabinet minister to privately urge Prime Minister Keir Starmer to schedule an exit.
He has been “the godfather of Andy’s comeback,” says John McTernan, a Miliband aide and former adviser to Labor Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Yet few British politicians were as divided as Miliband, and his bid to be named chancellor provoked a backlash.
For some of Britain’s most influential right-leaning newspapers, he is the guru of left-wing politics. Its total zero project and ban on new licenses for oil and gas exploration in the North Sea it offended some parties. The Trump administration, full of enthusiastic supporters of more oil drilling, was reportedly warned against him being Chancellor. (The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)
Now – although those close to Burnham insist no final decision has been “communicated” – it is Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood who looks set to be chancellor, emerging from a crowded field after weeks of internal debate – leaving open the question of where Miliband will fit into Burnham’s new order.
The options include replacing Yvette Cooper as foreign minister.according to some reports. If so, he already has some fans. Miliband would be “terrible” on the international stage if handed the role, one senior diplomat from a G20 country told POLITICO.
What does Ed eat?
The first signs that Miliband may be thinking about life after Keir Starmer have arrived on the banks of the River Mersey.
In September 2025, at the Labor Party Conference in Liverpool, the energy secretary used appearances at side events to wander outside his policy brief, openly criticizing some of the right-leaning aspects of Starmer’s record.
“Ultimately,” he told an interviewer on stage during the conference week, “you have to accept the idea that the problems … in this country are all about immigration. … It’s just wrong. There has to be a debate about what’s gone wrong with Britain. … We haven’t done enough of that.” Six months earlier, Starmer drew the ire of left-leaning MPs and campaigners after he warned that an unreformed immigration system could turn Britain into an “island of foreigners.”
Burnham was also the talk of the pubs at the Liverpool meeting in the following Septemberinterviewand The New Statesman magazine where he put forward an alternative plan for government, based on decentralization and greater public control of services.
Burnham was “really talented” and “right about the reform of Westminster and the reform of the political system,” Miliband said warmly. He also strongly supported Starmer: “Keir is my friend, my long-time friend. I’m Keir’s boy, I’m for Keir.”
But behind the scenes, the party was already going against the prime minister.
“Since the end of last year, many people in the Labor Party, even Keir supporters, thought the summer of 2026 would be the time when Keir would leave,” said one Miliband ally, who, like others in this article, did not want to be named to speak openly. “They could see (dismal defeats) in the local elections, in Scotland and Wales in the months ahead.”
As tensions began to mount over Starmer’s replacement, former Housing Secretary Angela Rayner was seen as Labour’s left-wing candidate for PM. But his leadership credentials have been tarnished by investigations into his tax affairs, leading to concerns on the left about their candidate.
Miliband himself, the same colleague said, “came to the right and self-aware conclusion about it – that he was not the right man.”
Even some of his ardent followers agreed. “It’s not going to work,” said one senior campaigner at the 2025 Labor conference, referring to Miliband’s media image, which has never fully recovered from defeat in 2015. “The backlash in the media, and then in the public, would be huge.”
When asked about his leadership aspirations that week of the conference, Miliband said “No” eight times. “No, I don’t know how many times I can say no.”
But his irritation to a different kind of government was clear to see.
“What is the essence of politics?” he asked during the aforementioned interview. “The goal of politics is to go out and argue for things. The goal of politics is to go out with values.”
A fighter
Miliband has always loved the column.
“It was a tough decision but also a heartless decision to make Andy’s position possible,” said the partner quoted above.
For him “everything is a war,” admitted a senior government official who has worked with Miliband.
“I’m not sure where that comes from. It was probably learned at the Miliband family table,” they added, a reference to Miliband’s parents: Ralph Miliband, a leading Marxist intellectual, and Marion Kozak, a socialist activist and Holocaust survivor who died, aged 91, this May.
Miliband’s parents’ childhood, and the suffering and loss suffered especially by Marion in Nazi-occupied Poland, give him “a clear sense of why politics is important, why you have to fight for ideas,” said a second partner.
Miliband fought and won against his older brother, David, who defeated him in the 2010 Labor leadership contest. David alsorecommended for possible workunder Burnham. But for many Labor MPs, it is the fate of the younger Miliband that matters.
Some inside Westminster still have deep reservations about Miliband, though.
“(Miliband) pretends he doesn’t want to be prime minister, and it’s not just his reputation. And he gives this image of being there and doing it as a party leader,” said one former senior official. “There’s something fake about him. … He’s drawn to the idea of Ed Miliband.”
But, argued Mcternan, Miliband has Burnham’s plan: “Burnhamism, Manchesterism is an ideology that says: The world is changing, so we’re going to do some things. Decentralize, decentralize, decentralize, re-engineer. … (Miliband) gets that we’re in the second quarter of the twentieth century and we need new approaches for the twenty-first century.”
Spokesmen in Miliband’s and Burnham’s teams declined to comment.
‘A very good product to export’
Whichever way he turns, Burnham’s decision is being watched around the world.
Trump may not be a fan, but Miliband has “a formidable network of politicians, both in the UK and abroad,” noted the former first official. (In February he got a meeting in London to talk about clean energy with California governor and Democratic presidential candidate Gavin Newsom.)
“He would make the foreign secretary,” said a senior diplomat from a G20 country – a promotion that would allow Burnham to give Miliband more clout but not full powers and the Treasury job.
“You could say (Miliband is) a very good export product,” the senior diplomat continued. “The perception of him outside Britain is very positive. He (is) a universal person, very mature. He treats countries with respect as equals, including less developed countries. He is post-imperial – a very modern politician with a sense of generational responsibility.”
As foreign minister or chancellor, that could be important next year, the diplomat noted, as Britain hosts G20 meetings, including a meeting of finance ministers to help shape the global response to Iran’s energy crisis and global growth.
A trip to China to talk about clean energy investments last March doesn’t hurt his case, either, some say. Miliband has “built some relationships” with his counterparts in major international powers, said Yixian Sun, a professor of sustainable governance at the University of Bath who recently advised the government on its engagement with China. His “commitment to strengthen cooperation between the two countries” would “help Britain” if he had the job, Sun added.
But ultimately, a third senior government official said, whoever ends up in the top job will be bound by the same political and economic pressures as his recent predecessors, none of whom have found a way to solve Britain’s fundamental conundrum: How to deliver sustainable growth while balancing the books.
“This government will have a very difficult early period,” this former official said.
“They have a lot of big issues to deal with in the autumn Budget (and) they haven’t had much time to prepare or plan. … (whoever is the chancellor) will be very restrictive in monetary policy, on taxes, on borrowing, on spending. Their parameters to move are very narrow.”
Burnham’s problems are ultimately bigger and harder to solve than even the personnel decisions, they said.
“Er or not Ed… it might be a little too much.”
Esther Webber contributed to this report.
