Tuesday briefing: What challenges would Ed Miliband face as chancellor?

Ed Miliband speaking at the National Growth Debate in April. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PAView image in fullscreenEd Miliband speaking at the National Growth Debate in April. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PATuesday briefing: What challenges would Ed Miliband face as chancellor?

In today’s newsletter: Former Reasons to Be Cheerful guests on the challenges facing the presumptive next occupant of No 11 Downing StreetGood morning. Does anybody else remember Reasons to Be Cheerful? The podcast was hosted by radio presenter Geoff Lloyd and Ed Miliband, during what has been unkindly described as his wilderness years, after he stepped down as Labour leader in 2015.

I flipping loved that podcast. It started in 2017, soon after my son was born, and I have fond memories of driving across the country with a pooping infant, listening to Ed and Geoff discuss ideas to fix the world. It gave me hope my kid might grow up into a half-decent future.

Barely a decade later, Miliband is back on political centre stage. Everywhere you look there’s a briefing from this former chief adviser, or that union leader, or an ally of Larry the Cat saying that Andy Burnham must make him chancellor, or that, if he does, it will bring unmitigated disaster to the country.But here on First Edition we thumb our noses at conventional Westminster reporting.

Instead, I’ve gone back through the Reasons to Be Cheerful archive, and asked a few regular podcast guests about the challenges facing the next occupant of No 11 Downing Street. First, this morning’s headlines.Five big stories UK politics | Nigel Farage has been accompanied by his friend George Cottrell, a convicted fraudster, to numerous Reform events and fundraisers and on a trip to Abu Dhabi, raising questions about the claim that he has no official role in the party.

World Cup | Donald Trump said he personally asked Fifa president Gianni Infantino to review the red card shown to USA striker Folarin Balogun, saying he believed the dismissal was unfair but insisting he did not pressure football’s governing body to overturn the suspension. UK news | One of the UK’s most horrific and shocking child custody scandals was collectively ignored for decades because the victims were working-class boys from the north of England, a government minister has said. Immigration | A Jamaican man who has lived more than half his life in the UK is facing deportation to his home country in one of the first cases since new anti-immigration measures were announced in last week’s immigration bill.

Israel | A British charity is funding a religious school at the heart of expansion plans for the illegal Israeli settlement in the Palestinian city of Hebron. In depth: ‘The idea he’s going to be fiscally irresponsible is just stupid’View image in fullscreenAndy Burnham and Ed Miliband outside No 10 in 2024. Photograph: Chris J Ratcliffe/ReutersNo wonder Andy Burnham prefers a Reddit AMA when every Westminster political reporter is gripped by feverish speculation about who the next prime minister might pick as his dance partner.

Energy secretary Ed Miliband remains the clear frontrunner – indeed he’s already understood to be developing economic policy for Burnham, a close ally. Shabana Mahmood has been touted as Miliband’s closest rival, although she’s apparently keen to remain in the Home Office (we considered her asylum reforms last week); New Labour veteran Pat McFadden and foreign secretary Yvette Cooper have also been mooted.But the Treasury is a department not an individual – and one of near-mythic status across Whitehall, notorious for rigid orthodoxies and short-term bean counting.

That’s precisely the point that my esteemed colleagues on the leaders desk made last week, when they endorsed Miliband for the role: “A government that wants to reshape the country needs a powerful finance minister whose instincts are to repurpose the Treasury, not just reassure it.”Take on the TreasuryI went first to Jonathan Portes, a professor of economic and public policy at King’s College London, who joined Reasons to Be Cheerful in 2018 to talk about shaping a 21st-century welfare state. Like Miliband, Portes is a former Treasury adviser.

There are two reasons why the department is unusually powerful in the UK, he argues: many other countries separate out the budgetary function from longer-term planning and growth strategy; and, second, “we’re exceptional in the weakness of No 10.”“The centre of government ends up, in many respects, being the Treasury,” Portes tells me, “because No 10 is a glorified prime minister’s office, rather than a department.”Portes accepts the criticism of the “institutional mind” of the Treasury but says the department is also very political.

“And if it has a strong chancellor who tells them what to do, it is much better at delivering than other departments.”View image in fullscreenEd Miliband and Geoff Lloyd when they were doing the podcast Reasons to Be Cheerful. Photograph: Rory LindsayThe important question