David Miliband has dropped a huge hint that he could stand for Labour at the next general election.
The former cabinet minister - who lost out to his brother Ed when he stood to be Labour leader in 2010 - said it had “not been decided yet” whether he will make a dramatic Commons comeback.
Miliband quit as MP for South Shields in 2013 to become president and chief executive of humanitarian charity the International Rescue Committee, based in New York.
He has repeatedly refused to rule out one day returning to the House of Commons as an MP.
On LBC last night, presenter Andrew Marr said to Miliband: “I’m just putting it you that you’ll be back in parliament by the time of the next election.”
The former foreign secretary replied: “That’s not been decided yet. That’s not done.”
He added: “I’m not even going to go there because I’ve got to do justice to the people who are working for the International Rescue Committee... It means a lot to me that job, and I’m very committed to it.
“The Labour Party is, thank God, put itself into a position where it’s got good people leading it. It’s got developing its plans for government. That’s something that I think is really essential for the country that I really care about.”
Miliband went on: “If you start thinking about your next job, you get yourself into trouble.”
He also said he was “enthusiastic about where Keir Starmer has taken Labour”.
Senior Labour sources told HuffPost that while initial conversations with Miliband may have taken place, there was no imminent prospect of him being a candidate at the next election, which is due in 2024 or 2025.
One said: “It would create endless speculation as to his role, as well as huge resentment from those who didn’t just disappear for a decade.”
Another source said: “It’s very David Miliband that now we look like we might win he’s suddenly ‘ready’ to come back.”
Miliband was a senior policy adviser to Tony Blair in Downing Street before becoming South Shields MP at the 2001 general election.
After holding a number of ministerial positions, he ran for leader following Labour’s 2010 election defeat, but narrowly lost out to his brother following a bruising contest.
Miliband refused to serve in Ed Miliband’s shadow cabinet, eventually quitting parliament in 2013.
Although no longer involved in frontline politics, he was an outspoken critic of Jeremy Corbyn’s time in charge of Labour.
Speaking in 2020, he accused Corbyn and his allies of being in “denial” about Labour’s 2017 and 2019 election losses.
“When people got to look at Labour in 2017, we couldn’t beat the worst Tory campaign in history… and then when people got the full measure of Jeremy Corbyn in 2019, he led us to the worst election defeat since the 1930s,” Miliband told Times Radio.