I know that sounds trite, but I genuinely believe that. Miliband sounds nervous today only around mentions of his brother. It matters to Ed that their children know each other, however distant they are geographically: they have a good relationship.
Does Ed think David will ever return to British politics? What does he think of Sir Nick Clegg working for Facebook? His response comes with a dollop of cantankerous camp. When he thinks of those years alongside Clegg and Cameron, though, one regret lingers more than most. He became Labour leader when his eldest son, Daniel, was 15 months old and his youngest, Samuel, was a few months away from being born.
When my father was there, he was there. Miliband spends lots of time with his children now, although he got into trouble for writing his book during their last summer holiday. His losing the election has also been good for his wife, he says, happily: she became a High Court judge, therefore a QC and a dame, in He sounds almost jolly, almost glad that he lost.
Maybe he was. I mean Because I put my heart and soul into it, for all the faults and all the things I did wrong. Alastair Campbell went and only did No, no, no!
What he does want to talk about is how much has changed in his lifetime. We speak again, twice, over the next six weeks. The first time just after a Jennifer Arcuri exclusive ran in the Sunday Mirror , raising more questions about her relationship with Johnson and the misuse of public funds.
The second time, the Tory sleaze scandal is growing. Miliband allows himself a little steam. Like a Bullingdon Club ethos writ large? Cameron can send text messages to Rishi Sunak. Still, Miliband never sounds angry. He obviously avoids this at all costs.
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Opinion Show more Opinion. He had spent much of the first 40 years of his life in the shadow of his older brother David, the former foreign secretary. The two even lived in neighbouring flats in the same building for a while. They both sat in Gordon Brown's cabinet, with Ed filling the less high profile role of climate change and energy secretary. Ed used to introduce himself at meetings as "the other Miliband".
His stunning victory in the leadership contest caused a rift in the Miliband family that is still healing. Mr Miliband himself has admitted it has been more difficult than he expected. David was offered a shadow cabinet role but opted to leave British politics altogether, taking up a job as the head of the International Rescue charity in New York, avoiding speculation about rivalry with his younger brother that would surely have followed had he stayed around.
His supporters insisted during the leadership campaign that he was more "human", less aloof than David. He is a self-confessed maths "geek" who was a secret Dallas fan as a boy - they are hardly Bobby and JR, but Ed had enough of a ruthless streak to challenge his brother for the job long thought to be his. Mr Miliband has made much of the fact he went to an ordinary North London comprehensive school. And while this is true, his childhood will probably have been a little more colourful, and certainly more intellectually stimulating, than that of the average North London schoolboy.
His father, Ralph, a Polish Jew who fled the Nazi invasion of Belgium in , was one of the leading Marxist theorists of his generation - and a fierce critic of the Labour Party. Their mother, Marion Kozak, is also a well-known figure on the British left. Growing up, their Primrose Hill home played host to the leading intellectuals and Labour politicians of the age, with dinner guests including Ken Livingstone and Tariq Ali. The family's basement dining room was the scene of high-minded and often heated debates between major figures on the Left.
The Miliband brothers were always encouraged to chip into the debate with their own opinions and, apparently, Tony Benn was even known to have given the brothers a few pointers with their homework. Ed has spoken of how he bonded with his father when he accompanied him on trips to the US, where Ralph worked as a lecturer. It is also where he became a fan of the Boston Red Sox baseball team.
But although he is sometimes said to be politically closer to Ralph than his brother, in truth the two Miliband brothers are worlds away from his brand of socialism.
Although no lover of Soviet-style one-party rule or violent revolution, he had abandoned the Labour Party long before his sons were born, believing socialism could never be achieved through Parliamentary means. Ralph died in , a few weeks before Tony Blair became Labour leader, but had viewed with unease his sons' part in creating what would become known as New Labour.
Their mother Marion, an early CND activist and human rights campaigner, who is a leading member of the Jews for Justice for Palestinians group, and who, unlike Ralph, remained in the Labour Party, is thought to have been a greater influence on their political development.
Friends say the leadership contest between the brothers was a huge "strain" for Marion. She has even told people it would have been much easier had they simply become academics rather than politicians. David and Ed's background helped speed their way into Labour politics - Ed spent the summer after his O-levels doing work experience for Tony Benn, then a senior Labour left-winger.
Mr Benn would reward him years later by backing his leadership campaign. By their teenage years, both brothers were fully fledged campaigners for Labour. Ed was never part of the "cool" set at school, although he has joked that he did not get beaten up too often.
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