He is best known as a former Labour leader – having beaten his brother David, among others, in the dramatic leadership contest that followed the party’s 2010 general election defeat.
Support from the trade unions had proved decisive back then.
Winning by just 1%, the younger Miliband took over the reigns of the party from acting leader Harriet Harman aged just 40 years old, in a vote he said marked a new generation of the Labour Party.
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 in 2013.
As leader, Ed Miliband wanted to move beyond the New Labour era, projecting a more left wing message on tax and inequality, and distancing himself from the Iraq War.
He picked up supporters in the #milifandom, an online campaign run by Abby Tomlinson, then 17-years-old, who posted photos of Miliband with floral wreaths photoshopped onto his head and referring to him as “Milibae”.
However, he also made headlines for his appearance, with cartoonists regularly sketching him as Wallace, from the Wallace and Gromit animations, and a particularly unflattering photograph of him making a meal out of eating a bacon sandwich in 2014.
There were also several gaffes, including the Edstone – a 2.6m (8 ft 6 in) tall limestone tablet engraved with six policies on improving the economy, the NHS, cutting immigration, and building new homes.
Unfortunately the policies were overshadowed by mockery of the giant stone slab, which proved to be a tombstone for Miliband’s 2015 election hopes.
Speaking at the Hay Festival in 2021, Miliband said his biggest regret was “not the sandwich” – a reference to the infamous bacon sandwich photo – but “not speaking in primary colours about the changes I want to see”.
“I have become bolder as I have become older,” he added.
Miliband resigned to make way for Jeremy Corbyn, who led the party from 2015 to 2020, when Sir Keir took over as party leader in opposition.
He returned to the political frontline under then-leader Sir Keir, first as shadow business secretary, and then shadow climate change and net zero secretary in 2021.
Speaking that same year, Miliband told BBC Political Thinking he was still recovering from what he labelled a “gut wrenching” defeat that was “in many ways” a personal rejection of him.
However, the 2024 Labour landslide under Sir Keir saw him tackling climate change with a renewed zeal in government, pushing a Green Prosperity Plan to invest in renewables and unlock new jobs and economic growth.
