Milburn: how I can help Brown

Alan Milburn was nine years old when he arrived home to find the front door of his council house had been painted bright yellow. His mother, who looked after him on her own, was perplexed. In the morning it had been red, but men with brushes had come and gone. This was to have a radicalising effect on the young Tynesider. Some 40 years later, reclining in the chair of his rooftop office opposite the House of Commons, his outrage still seems fresh.

‘I can remember the emotion of being slightly freaked by the whole affair,’ he said. ‘The colour wasn’t chosen by my mum. Nor by my granddad. It was chosen by the council: but they didn’t live in that house, and we did.’ From then on, he has had a dislike of state control. ‘The reason why I cannot stand statism lies in where I come from. There was a sense then, which I could not abide, of knowing your place.