David Miliband
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The Right Honourable David Wright Miliband (born 15 July 1965 in London) is a United Kingdom politician, Labour Member of Parliament for South Shields in north-east England. He was appointed Minister of State for Communities and Local Government following the 2005 general election.
Miliband was educated at Haverstock Comprehensive School in London, and read Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, winning first class honours. He then took a Masters degree in Political Science at MIT, where he was a Kennedy Scholar. He joined the Institute for Public Policy Research as a policy analyst in 1989, before becoming Tony Blair's Head of Policy in 1994. He was a major contributor to Labour's manifesto for the 1997 general election.
He was elected to Parliament in the 2001 election, becoming head of the Prime Minister's Policy Unit. Barely a year after being elected, in June 2002 he was appointed as Schools Minister, a junior minister in the Department for Education and Skills. On 15 December 2004, in the reshuffle following the resignation of David Blunkett, he replaced Ruth Kelly as Cabinet Office Minister.
On May 6, 2005, following Labour's historic third consecutive election victory, he was elevated to the Cabinet as Minister of State for Communities and Local Government, a newly created cabinet post with responsibility for housing, planning, regeneration and local government. To appease the Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott, who is officially in charge of these portfolios, Miliband will not be given the title Secretary of State, although he is a full member of the Cabinet.
As a protégé of Tony Blair, Miliband is regarded by many as a possible future Prime Minister. He is the brother of economist Edward Miliband, and son of the Marxist Ralph Miliband. With his American-British wife, Louise Shackleton, he adopted a newborn US baby over Christmas 2004.
External links
- ePolitix - David Miliband (http://www.epolitix.com/EN/MPWebsites/David+Miliband) official site
- Office of the Deputy Prime Minister - The Rt Hon David Miliband MP (http://www.odpm.gov.uk/stellent/groups/odpm_about/documents/page/odpm_about_037815.hcsp) official biography
- Guardian Unlimited Politics - Ask Aristotle: David Miliband MP (http://politics.guardian.co.uk/person/0,9290,-8431,00.html)
- TheyWorkForYou.com - David Miliband MP (http://www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/david_miliband/south_shields)