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. And I’m afraid to say, I have never been good at that.’

Gordon Brown may well agree. During Mr Milburn’s four years as health secretary, he spent much time sparring over the level of autonomy to be given to hospitals. Whether it was a Whitehall turf war or ideological battle, the Chancellor was portrayed as championing centralised control and Mr Milburn the market-driven ‘choice’ agenda. Only he saw this as Keir Hardie socialism where the state ‘enables more and controls less’. Now out of government, he is fighting the same battle.

‘There is the battle of organisation politics, which matters. But there is also the battle of ideas,’ he says. ‘Labour lost in the 1980s because we were outgunned on ideas. I want to make sure that doesn’t happen now. And it won’t. People now don’t want to be told, “Vote for me and I will sort it out.”