Here's my latest column for the Caledonian Mercury – some musing, from a personal angle, on the dangers and wonders of working with your brother on a common project, looking at how Ed and David Miliband might (or might not) reconcile their talents, after the former's victory in the Labour leadership race. All comments, as usual, most welcomed.
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I've been watching the Millibandery of the Labour Party leadership battle with more than ideological interest. The dynamics of working with your brother is something I'm very much aware of, having done so with my own brother Gregory over the last quarter of a century, as one half of Hue And Cry.
But apart from the rollercoaster psychology of it all, there's something about how the Miliband brothers have conducted themselves that has wider implications for how we think about how politics is done, and should be done.
The C4 documentary Miliband of Brothers showed that the boys lived and breathed politics from the breakfast table onwards, under the gentle patriarchy of their Marxist father, Ralph Miliband. There's a poignant moment when the father pokes his head round one of their bedroom doors and expresses pained despair at them joining "New... Labour!"
That neither of these comfortably raised Islington sociocrats would echo their father's exile-driven ultra-leftism (as Tom Devine told me the other week, Ralph's real first name was "Adolph") is no surprise. But due to the necessary differentiations that siblings have to make among themselves, we should also expect that two political brothers would make distinct variations on their common theme.
The intriguing question is: after the younger triumphing over the older for a mutually coveted prize, how will they both handle the new power balance between them?
From my own experience of creative partnership with a sibling - which seems to have been a lot more stormy than the Milibands - you have to eventually realise that you each have your own domain of expertise. The main job of the partnership is to support the other in mastering that expertise, all aimed at serving the commonly-agreed goal. For too much of our early period in Hue And Cry, Greg and I were involved in a power-struggle for dominance: who was the real music leader here?
It got a lot easier for me when I realised that, while we write the songs together, Greg's production and arrangement talent reigns supreme. I should focus on being the best singer I can be, and take a holistic view near the end of a recording process, than try to micro-manage decisions that I'm frankly not expert enough to do.
Let's push this analogy tentatively (and as much for fun as anything else). What may be the problem for the Milibands is that both are equally qualified - both can be, as it were, lead singer and keyboard player combined. Both practised their political riffs at an early stage by taking a Politics, Philosophy and Economics degree at the same Oxford college. Both set out on separate but conventional paths of political advice and policy development within New Labour, (the elder allied to Blair, the younger to Brown). Both ended up with significant Minstries (whether diplomacy or environment).
So yes, the Milibands were always in the same group. The leadership contest for them was more like a duo that's temporarily "taking a rest" - the problem being that each had their own own solo album out, and both of them were contending for the same top music prize. (Maybe Ed's record is more scratchy-indie, and David's is more orchestras and session-players). The question is, now that the younger one has won the Mercurys, with all the evident status and power that confers, will the older one want to join the old outfit again? Or will he prefer to follow his own creative path?
Risible analogies aside, there's one strong reason to want them to resolve their own psycho-drama (no matter that David M refutes that there is one: believe me, there's always psycho-drama when brothers work together). During their campaigns, they both cast up visions of a gentler kind of male leadership that has real consequences for policy.
The elder proposed that at least one Cabinet post could be a parental job-share - clearly aimed at Ed Balls and Yvette Cooper who have a young family, but intended to set an example to work-life balancing throughout the organisations of these islands. David M's "Movement for Change", embracing faith and community groups like London Citizens, brought a noticeably different, less aggressive tone to Labour activism - something his brother has praised in the last few days (along with the Caledonian Mercury!).
And Ed Miliband's appeal to the "squeezed middle" of British families - for whom the cycle of mortgage-overwork-overdebtedness-consumerism is clearly undermining their quality of life - should be able to open up a solid critique of the Coalition's cuts as increasing their insecurity even more.
But changing the vocabulary and metaphors in which a social-democratic politics can be voiced is a crucial task for the Labour Party (and something their now-triumphant Compass grouping will be pushing for). In Scotland, the SNP have always been able to cushion their centre-leftism in the language of Scottish patriotism and nationhood. This has its own automatic and worthwhile emotional appeal (the Scottish variant is certainly more robust than Gordon Brown's weird Ukanianism), as long as it's handled with dignity and care.
From within the political village - where loathsome creatures like Andrew Neil get to orchestrate the media debate - it's easy to sneer and recoil at the protestations of brotherly love that the Milibands are making (and will make) to each other, no matter their own eventual political arrangements. But we should realise just how powerful this language of love and connection might actually be. The early Cameron, and his Saatchi-trained marketing advisors, knew this well – and tellingly, in yesterday’s speech, Ed M also brought the L-word into his vision of the “good” (as opposed to the “big”) society.
If tied to a left politics that genuinely addresses our anxieties about the state of our relationships - personal, familial, communal, maybe even global - and what structures can help sustain and improve them, the "new generation" of Labour might use their time in opposition well.
But if anything's required in the midst of general chaos - the music business and the politics business at least share that - it's strong, mutually supportive and ultimately unconditional relationships. It'll be a shame if the Milibands can't work it out. I can personally testify that it's a great background for common endeavour when it does.