David Miliband

Member of Parliament
for South ShieldsIn office
7 June 2001 – 15 April 2013Preceded byDavid ClarkSucceeded byEmma Lewell-BuckDirector of the Number 10 Policy UnitIn office
2 May 1997 – 7 June 2001Prime MinisterTony BlairPreceded byNorman BlackwellSucceeded byAndrew AdonisPersonal detailsBornDavid Wright Miliband
(1965-07-15) 15 July 1965
PartyLabourSpouseChildren2ParentsRelativesEd Miliband (brother)EducationCorpus Christi College, Oxford (BA)
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (SM)Kennedy Scholarship (1988)Signature

David Wright Miliband (born 15 July 1965) is a British former politician serving as President of the International Rescue Committee since 2013. He was the Foreign Secretary from 2007 to 2010 and the Member of Parliament (MP) for South Shields in North East England from 2001 to 2013. He and his brother, Ed Miliband, were the first siblings to sit in the Cabinet simultaneously since Edward, Lord Stanley and Oliver Stanley in 1938. He was a candidate for Labour Party leadership in 2010, following the resignation of Gordon Brown, but was defeated by his brother and subsequently left politics.

Miliband started his career at the Institute for Public Policy Research. Aged 29, he became Tony Blair's Head of Policy while the Labour Party was in opposition, and he was a contributor to Labour's manifesto for the 1997 election, which brought the party to power. Blair subsequently made him head of the Prime Minister's Policy Unit from 1997 to 2001, at which point Miliband was elected to Parliament for the seat of South Shields.

Miliband spent the next few years in various junior ministerial posts, including at the Department for Education and Skills, before joining the Cabinet in 2006 as Environment Secretary. His tenure in this post saw climate change consolidated as a priority for policymakers and on the succession of Gordon Brown as Prime Minister in 2007, Miliband was promoted to become Foreign Secretary. At the age of 41, he became the youngest person to hold that office since David Owen 30 years earlier. In September 2010, Miliband narrowly lost the Labour leadership election to his brother Ed. On 29 September 2010, he announced that to avoid "constant comparison" with his brother, and because of the "perpetual, distracting and destructive attempts to find division where there is none, and splits where they don't exist, all to the detriment of the party's cause", he would not stand for the Shadow Cabinet.

On 15 April 2013, Miliband resigned from Parliament in order to take up the posts of President and CEO of the International Rescue Committee in New York City, which triggered a by-election in South Shields.