Dear David,
I want to tell you something that happened shortly after that day in 1997 that you emptied your desk in that funny little room in the opposition leader’s office in the Commons and I moved into it.
While you were sorting yourself out at 10 Downing Street as head of the policy unit, we Tories were having our first Shadow Cabinet meeting. It wasn’t much of one, since a goodly proportion of the members had lost their seat at the election. And instead of the smooth Civil Service taking a crisp minute, they were stuck with me trying to scribble notes down. But, nevertheless, within a few minutes an excitable discussion was taking place about how best to respond to the incoming Government’s Queen Speech.
After letting everyone rabbit on for a while, Michael Heseltine intervened. I can still see him now, pushing his chair away from the table, leaning back languidly and saying: “I think we should just calm down. We are all going to be here for a very long time.”
Think about that moment, David, as you reflect on the error you have just made. Because if you think on it hard enough, you might consider that it isn’t too late, even now, to reverse your course. You have allowed it to be known that you do not want to be the EU’s foreign minister. Everyone in the Labour Party is patting you on the back. Gordon Brown has probably sent you a letter of congratulation, spelling Miliband with two Ls. But they are thinking of themselves. Not of you. That task, it seems, falls to me.
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Now you probably recall opposition quite fondly. I remember chatting to you in those days, and you were full of Tony Blair’s mission to change the party. Things were going your way. You were on the up. It was all “I think David Miliband is coming to our seminar” and “Have you seen, David Miliband is here?”. “No, I just saw him leave with Peter Mandelson.”
Immediately after losing office, though, things aren’t like that. No one much wants to know. You make a speech and no one covers it. The party has cashflow problems and can’t afford to buy you a laptop or pay your single research assistant. You’ll be watching the TV one day and find out that the business bloke who was always trying to see you when you were Foreign Secretary has just been named by the Tories to head a quango. He is telling Jon Snow that he has always been one of Theresa Villiers’s biggest fans.
And then there’s the pointlessness of it all. You’ll find it isn’t a proper job. You are a serious person, someone who believes in things, wants to change things. You will find waiting for Grant Shapps to make a speech and then saying you disagree to be a huge waste of your time.
And then, of course, there’s the money. You are paid something like £145,000 now, but in opposition you will just get your MP’s salary of £65,000. Your allowance is about to be slashed and it will be hard for a Labour Shadow Cabinet minister to have a second job. You are not very materialistic, but that’s a big drop.
Michael Heseltine was right that this all lasted a very long time. But he wasn’t right to say that we were all going to be there. Most people took a good look around and decided they had other things to do. Even selling industrial overalls seemed more exciting (I am not making that up). EU high representative is a proper big job. Opposition isn’t.
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Now, you will be thinking that none of this applies to you. You are the front-runner to be leader of the Labour Party. And if you can be that, and Labour don’t lose too badly, you can be prime minister. As a Labour leader in with a chance, there would be attention, no salary drop and, most importantly for you, I know, a really worthwhile job to do.
But we’ve discussed football probabilities, you and I. So I know you realise that being front-runner for Labour leader doesn’t mean that the chance of getting the job is more than 50 per cent. Add in your chance of Labour losing narrowly enough to come straight back and you then going on to become prime minister, and the odds don’t look all that good.
One other thing you need to think about. Would you, actually, be any good as opposition leader? I hold you in high regard. We don’t always agree (I thought your stance on the Lisbon treaty was outrageous, whereas you thought mine was idiotic), but I think you bring a fierce intelligence to your work. And if I discuss a political issue with you I need to be on my mettle. Yet this isn’t the same as being a successful candidate for prime minister, as my old boss William Hague discovered.
I think you would have to agree that your happiest and most successful moments have, ahem, not always coincided with your appearances in the limelight. You would be under huge pressure as Labour leader. Trying to hold off the Left, revive the party, be a convincing public figure when the media and public entertain doubts. For all your talent, it might not end well.
Of course, your allies will have told you that you would be doing your duty. If you ran away from the Labour leadership now, it would be cowardice. Well, let me put a counter point. What about the rest of us?
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The Lisbon treaty is your work as much as anyone’s. You pushed it through and you told everyone that it really mattered. You’ve been making speeches on the importance of the new job as EU foreign minister. You’ve said it is an essential tool of influence.
Yet now — now — you tell me that you don’t actually want to do it yourself. You don’t mind if we get someone less Atlanticist and less pro free trade. It isn’t as important to you that Britain gets the right EU foreign minister as it is that you remain a viable Labour leadership candidate.
Well, thank you very much. You created this job. The rest of us didn’t want it. You may not be running away from Labour, but you are running away from the rest of us.
It isn’t too late. You can still do it.
Yours ever, Daniel