¶ Intro / Opening
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio News.
We've got to recognize that the recession of democracy is a phenomenon and the international rule of law is in retreat as well.
David Milliband, once a top British politician and now running one of the world's largest aid organizations, I think was the elephant in the room in this conversation is the United States.
What comes to my mind is that the US was the anchor of the global system. Didn't mean that it played a role in every part of it, didn't mean that it got everything right, but it was the anchor. And the anchor has been pulled up avour.
From Bloomberg Weekend, this is the Michelle Hussein Show. I'm Michelle Hussein. I'm sure there's never been an easy time to run an aid agency, but this moment feels particularly charged. There are millions of people around the world in desperate need, and at the same time, powerful governments are cutting back on their giving. That's the world that David Milliband has to navigate every day. He's been running the International Rescue Committee for more than a decade now. It's a New
York based organization. It works in the US and around the world. And he came to the job as a politician. He'd been Britain's Foreign secretary, the top diplomat, seen as a future prime minister, and then he had a shock in twenty ten when in a Labor leadership election his party chose his brother over him. That's a long time ago now, and he has built a new career with energy and passion. But his old friends in Labor are now in power in the UK and that government, like others,
is cutting back on foreign aid. So obviously, when he came into the studio in Life London, I wanted to know how he feels about that. There is, as you might expect, British political chat in this conversation, and David Millibound also talks about his old boss, Tony Blair. I'd also been thinking though about his background, and it's linked to his work now, how his parents, both Jewish, had narrow escapes from Nazi occupied Europe as children, and that's where this conversation begins.
My dad's family story involved a lot of trauma and tragedy. But he came to the UK in nineteen forty sixteen year old became a student. He thought it was ridiculous to be studying in Cambridge instead of fighting fascism, so he joined the Royal Navy, and despite the trauma there and he was not a sort of himself as a heroic figure in the war effort. There was a lot
of talk about it. There was a lot of talk about how his mother and sister survived a call to report to Brussels railway station, where many of their relatives did and were never seen again.
And he had just got out literally in the last chance till his father's chance.
His mother and sister were saved effectively by a Catholic family south of Brussels. So on his side there was more discussion, including of forty three family members that he lost in the Holocaust. On my mother's side, she found it much more difficult to talk about it. In fact, she did didn't talk about it.
Did She spend much of the war in hiding d She lived through Nazi occupation.
She was younger, so she was born in nineteen thirty four. My dad was born in nineteen twenty four, and so for her hidden in a convent first of all, hidden then by a family that they knew in Warsaw, so it was and then she lost her father in a concentration camp, and her mother sent her just as a twelve year old to the UK in nineteen forty six on her own to say was stay as part of a group of Jewish kids who were sent actually orphan.
Kids start a new life.
Yeah, And I think that for her it was just too the trauma was too great, so she didn't talk about it. So I think I once wrote, the first refugees I ever met were my parents, and that's the truth. And they did want to give us the security that they didn't have. But there was this slightly bifurcated. One part of the story filled in, another part of the story less filled in. Ironically, when I went to apply to be the CEO of the International Rescue Committee, they said,
why do you want this job? You're in politics at the moment, I was a backbench MP. I said, well, one, I like really difficult problems and how you deliver humanitarian aid in Syria between the ASTAD and government, the Russians, branches of ALCAI. It is a really difficult problem we want to work on that. I'd like to work on difficult problems. Secondly, I said, an organization founded by Albert
Einstein in the nineteen thirties. You don't get better shoulders to stand on than that founded by alber Einstein, who'd written letters to Ellen Roosevelt pleading with her to persuade her husband, the President, to let Jews and others from Europe come into America and failed in that, and so set up the International Rescue Committee really as a response to that. But then thirdly, I said, my parents were both refugees, and so some of the clients of the
International Rescue Committee are people who fled across borders. Others are still stuck in war zones. And so I felt in some way, I guess I was closing a bit of a circle, helping people of different generation, different religion probably, but whose circumstances I could at least relate to through the experience of my parents.
And it's absolutely understandable that that trauma that your mother experienced, that it was very difficult for her to talk about it. Did you just understand that and navigate around it, or do you remember asking her and trying to find out.
I think we must have picked up the vibes. I think I don't remember doing the equivalent of a Bloomberg or Today program interview, trying to pump her the for the answers. Her mother was still alive. I remember my grandmother, but obviously different people take it in different ways and come through learning different lessons.
I guess she named you, didn't she after her father? Your grandfather, Your murdered grandfather was David.
Yes, he was David Kozak. And actually there was a certain element of closure, including for her. In twenty sixteen, out of the blue, I got an email from a German voluntary historical society saying, we think we've now concluded our work about the Heilfingen concentration camp, and we're convinced that we've now located the records that show that your grandfather was brought here from Auschwitz in November nineteen forty four,
and he was killed in January nineteen forty five. And we've done that for many of those who lost their lives here, and we're going to have a ceremony to mark this place. And so I was able to go with Brotherred and with my mother and her sister to finally, sixty years later, seventy years later, mark the the loss of her father.
How did you feel standing there?
I felt the weight of terrible trauma. Really, I looked at my mother who was ten years old when she lost her father. She hadn't seen him for four years, and you just think, there but for the grace of God. Really, I mean, it's a feeling of the emptiness on one side and the fortune on the other.
And also January nineteen forty five, when camps are being liberated elsewhere, I mean, it's nearly at the end.
Yeah, And it's obviously far from the only story of this kind, so one doesn't want to absorb it as a personal story.
But I wondered, you do you think about this heritage when you come face to face with people in desperate situations, which you do.
You don't need family heritage for your head and your heart to just bond with that person in a really I think profound and way. And so I think that I wouldn't want to overplay that. There is one element though, which maybe relates to something we'll talk about later. Whenever
¶ Growing up, democracy "seemed like the norm"
any of us grew up, we think what we're experiencing is normal. And I grew up in a relatively middle class family in the nineteen seventies and nineteen eighties in London, in Leeds, and that seemed like the norm. We lived in a democratic country, we live in the country of liberties.
With all that's going on in the world today, suddenly the period nineteen forty five to two thousand and twenty six in Western Europe, and certainly the period of the Cold War and the immediate post Cold War doesn't look like the norm. It looks like the exception. And so these questions that are being raised by all sorts of people about remembering that it's a narrow corridor, the one between a state that's too strong and is dictatorial and
a state that's too weak and you've got anarchy. I was lucky enough to grow up in this narrow corridor.
¶ 2007 speech at Labour Party Conference
Well, as it happens, speaking of how the world has changed, I found myself reading back a speech you gave in two thousand and seven when you were British Foreign Secretary, and it's well, it's fascinating to read it now, and I'm not doing it in a kind of hindsight is a wonderful thing kind of way.
Hope I had a bit of foresights in there.
Well, you'll certainly there is much to celebrate. You say, there are fewer countries at war than ever before, more trade, more travel, more connections around the globe, aspiration unleashed. Do you remember standing there on that stage and feeling like there was so much that Britain could do on the world stage.
Well, I remember standing that. I don't remember what I said quite in anything like the detail that you. I remember. It was the first time I think I spoken to lay body conferences from Minister. It was still a optimistic time. It was before the financial crisis. It was after the really difficult problems in Iraq. Afghanistan was very difficult, but
there was still a feeling. It was after Vladimir Putin's Munich Security Conference speech in February two thousand and seven when he said that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest catastrophe of the twentieth century. So there were some the drums were beating, but I think that there was still a sense of a tide of history.
Remember you'd got the enormous wave of democratization of the nineteen nineties, never mind the release of Nelson Mandela and the end of apartheid, and the global system had just united behind the idea of the responsibility to protect, which was the idea if states were oppressing their own citizens, it wasn't just their business, and that state sovereignty was a foundation of the international system.
Age intervention, so were human rights. Yeah, of course it wouldn't have been that great if you were listening to that speech and you were in Iraqi or afghan civilian. I wondered, though, even as you look back, and even as we make this contrast, whether you think Mark Carney
¶ Mark Carney's 2026 speech at Davos
was right when he at Davos talked about the idea of the rules based international order being partially false. You were at Davos yourself that there were always exceptions to this, There was a version of mitis right then as well.
It was a very significant and very important speech, And I think not just that we should recognize that he was correct to call out that the rules based order operated with more than you use the word exceptions. I think that's probably generous. I wrote a piece in Foreign Affairs two and a half years ago which said that the Ukraine War had united the West but divided us from the rest, And I asked why did it divide
us from the rest? And the reason was that for the rest, which are democratic countries like India and South Africa and also undemocratic countries. They saw the emphasis on territorial integrity, on sovereignty as being given to an honored in the Ukraine case, but not honored in enough other cases. And there's a range of other ways in which.
The rules based shooting Iraq, I have to say because I was in South Asia when the all invasion of Ukraine took place and I heard exactly this, your country was part of an invasion.
And of course two wrongs don't make it right, but still it's right to say that it was honored in the breach as well as in the observance the idea of a rules based or Now the question then is do you want to correct the breaches or do you want to dispense with the honoring. And I still think that the idea that alongside the rights of states, there are rights of individuals, which was the essential lesson that the post war pioneers took from the inter war period
and from the rest of history. That's still an important lesson.
I think was the elephant in the room in this conversation is something directly about the United States. That is the big change, isn't it in the last year.
Well, it's not the only change. It's the biggest change yet, and it's the biggest change in the last year. In the national security strategy that the Trump administration had put out,
¶ "America will no longer be Atlas"
they talk about themselves as America will no longer be Atlas, quote unquote propping up the global system. That's not the what came to my mind. What comes to my mind is that the US was the anchor of global system. Didn't mean that it played a role in every part of it, didn't mean that it got everything right, but it was the anchor. And the anchor has been pulled up avowedly. The Trump administration are very consistent. They said in the campaign, we don't believe in this role for America.
But I'm afraid it's not only the US. We've got to recognize that the recession of democracy is a phenomenon such that now there are more autocracies than democracies in the world today. That's significant. And then the international rule of law is in retreat as well, and so the rights that were given to individuals in the UN Charter and in Associated Conventions are in retreat. And so I think this dual process, both of the international system and
¶ "More autocracies than democracies in the world today"
domestically is worth calling out.
And you live in the US. You live in New York. You made it your home since you began leading the IRC twelve years ago. Twelve years ago. What are the conversations you have behind the scenes. Do you have any one in the Trump administration that you speak to.
Well, we talk to people in and around the administration.
We knew yourself. Yeah, you've got that kind of access.
I've talked to Yeah, but I don't want to exaggerate it. We've had a partnership with the US government for a very long time. I think that there's a very strong feeling that they've got a mandate for what they self describe as a revolution in America's role in the world,
¶ "A revolution in America's role in the world"
where they want to think globally in economics, but they're not going to think globally in politics. They're going to think about the Western hemisphere in politics. And that's a very big change. And their messages get used to it. This is the new dispensation that's been.
And what can you say in response? What's the way that you can make the case.
I make the case that it's in the strategic interest as well as the moral interest. If you say to people, there are forty five million children under the age of who are acutely malnourished in the world today. There's no one in the Trumpe adminisration who says, oh, that's a
good thing. That's not the response that you get. They say, we're going to have to find better ways of reaching those people, more efficient ways of reaching those people, more effective ways, more impactful, and more innovative ways of reaching those people. And so we try and find that landing zone for the conversation we have with them.
And I do want to talk about those ideas because they're obviously very pressing, and I also want to talk about the countries that are on your latest emergency watch list, the crises of twenty twenty six. But you mentioned the work that you have done with previous administrations as the International Rescue Committee. A lot of that was around people coming across the southern border and arrangements for them, provision
¶ IRC work on the US-Mexico border
for them. What do you think of the way that ICE has been behaving lately, the way that immigration rules controls are being enforced.
Well, just to be clear, we've been a major partner of the US government on refugee resettlement, which is the aug organized transfer after very extensive vetting of people from around the world to the US over the last well since the nineteen eighty Refugee Act, and actually it was Ronald Reagan who admitted more refugees to America on that route than any other president, and that's been stopped, so that partnership is over. That program has been wound up.
We do also serve asylum seekers and migrants whove crossed the border. We also have our own staff who have got legal status and then are allowed to work. We don't work in Minnesota, just to be clear that we're in seventeen states, but not in the state of Minnesota, so I can't speak to the details of that. What's clearly going on there is that all of the tensions
in America are exploding around this issue today. And what I know from the people that we serve and the people that we employ is that they've fled real danger. That's how they've got their assign and claim processed and being given the right to work. And they also are living with a question mark about their own status and whether or not their own story is going to be believed, and that creates a lot of fear, a lot of anxiety. I also want to acknowledge that in the most recent
Minnesotan cases, we've been talking about American citizens. The issues in respect of ICE are about American citizens, not just assign seks and refugees.
Let's talk then about the countries that you've put on
¶ IRC's 2026 Emergency Watchlist: Sudan and the Occupied Palestinian Territory
your emergency watch list, like going into this new year, the tenes that you think the world twenty Okay, I was on a list of the top test where clearly they're not the only ones. The two crisis you put right at the top, Sudan and the occupied Palestinian territory. I was looking at the complexity of these, one Sudan being a conflict in which more than ten other countries are involved, the other one involving the Palestinians being generational.
These appear so intractable. Is the only thing you can do to deal with the immediate need, rather than have any role in finding the ways to end these.
Yes, I mean, in short, remediation of desperate suffering is
¶ "Remediation of desperate suffering is our business"
our business. Health or transanitation, nutrition, livelihoods, protection of women from sexual violence, recovery of women from sexual violence. That's our business. We plead guilty to treating the symptoms. By treating the symptoms, I would add, you can sometimes prevent further destabilization down the road, because the one thing you can guarantee if you don't tend to humanitary crisis, it reinforces itself and produces further instability.
But you personally, when you go to these places and
¶ "If you talk to the people you have hope."
you sit with people and you hear their stories, it's such an important part of your work. It gives you that first hand experience. You then go into places where powerful people are and you can say I've seen this with my own eyes. But be honest about how it feels to walk away from that. Do you also feel relieved sometimes to be able to walk away?
I mean, actually, my team will tell you I want to spend more time talking to the clients because clients those light being the people in need, and more time talking to our staff who are often also in need. So is your employee employ in that exactly? I mean, We've got five hundred people working for us in Soudan, four hundred and eighty five of them are Sudanese. We've got people who used to work for the Bank of Kartoum who are now working for US as humanitar and
aid workers. I don't want to sound cheesy about it, but the courage, the tenacity, the ability to laugh sometimes as well as to cry. I mean, that's the most inspiring thing. Someone once said, if you look at the statistics, you get depressed. If you talk to the people, you have hope.
I agree with you. I've seen it as a journalist. But I also know that there is that privilege of being able to walk away, and there are these moments which just make you think, I can't explain why, you know, my life is so fundamentally different. It's like it's the luck of the luck of the.
Draw, of course, so you can explain it. I mean that that's the.
I can't deal with it, That's what I mean. Like, do you grapple with that or is it so much a part of your work that this this is what you have to But.
You remember the stories, you feel the sense of tragedy. But I'll never forget The first trip I did with the interns for Rice Community was to go and meet Syrian refugees in Jordan. And I went to talk to a group of women and I couldn't believe it. You know, there was literally first what I was a man going into all women's group. They wanted to talk to me.
They wanted to cry in front of me. They wanted to tell each of their stories, and I thought, my god, this is you know what these people are going through? And then I said to them, do any of you think you'll ever go back to Syria? And suddenly these beaming smiles came through the tears, the sense that they've not given up. So what conceivable grounds did I have to do you.
Have any idea where that group are now?
Some have gone back to Syria. A million people have gone back to Syria. The ones in Jordan. I don't know those specific ones that that there have been returns to Syria from Jordan. Of course, that doesn't mean you overcome the loss or you don't then go and find terrible further loss, because.
I've struggled with that part too, Keeping up and following the stories of people who you've covered as a as a journalist.
You know, that's a good point.
Their story is.
A good point.
The story you want it that in that moment and then.
Yeah, that's a powerful point. Yeah you do, and you do ask yourself, you know what happened to Lahimuhammad, the man I met in Ethiopia who was working on a water project with US. I mean, you do ask yourself that, and of course you don't know, do you know.
One foreign correspondent at the BBC once said to me that they had put a child in Afghanistan at the center of their piece on the then nine o'clock news, and lots of people wrote into the BBC and said, I really want to help that child, and he wrote back and said, help this organization if you want to, And people weren't interested. They wanted to help that child, but the idea of a connection to a wider group beyond that didn't resonate in the same way, and you're
left with this dilemma. Of course, you need to personalize and put Often one person is the face of a bigger problem, but sometimes people don't want to know about the bigger problem. And I guess that's what you grapple with.
Yeah, and I think that our response to that, the late Pope said that the world was suffering from the globalization of indifference. It's a pretty serious charge. I don't know if I's allowed to argue with the Pope, but the sense I have is that people are struggling with how to make a difference, not that they've become indifferent, and I think that this sense of people wanting agency is strong. I don't I think there can be compassion fatigue. They can think democratic Congo is always going to be
in crisis. But I think also the sense of people's sense of humanity is strong. Actually, and I think we've ended up in the humanitarian aid sector in general talking too much about inputs and not enough about outputs and outcomes. That's what's driving us.
¶ Jared Kushner's plans for Gaza
So Gaza given the number two on your watch list, Jared Kushner has set out his plans and his vision for Gaza. What do you think of it?
Well, it would be good if it could happen, and that's the question. And obviously we have a team of Gazans who are working for us. Their concern at the moment is a long way from what was.
On the slide because people are living intense at best. I mean, let's be clear what some people living in the open air well.
The tents have been blown away by the rains. There've been very significant rains. The tents couldn't survive it. The fact that there's a ceasefire is a blessed relief and gives a chance to make inroads on the needs. Although people are still being killed in Gaza, so I don't.
Want more than four hundred have been killed since the Yes.
Nonetheless, it's better to have a ceasefire than not have a cease fire. The aid deliveries are not yet reaching the level that's promised in phase one of the plan that was published, and we need that.
But just going back to what you said about Jered Cushion's plans, it would be good if they happen. There's a part of what he set out. There's a coastal tourism zone with tower blocks and residential areas. Are you sure that those are four Palestinians.
What was interesting. This is why it's important to go through it. There's obviously a very real concern that at the moment these really defense force are more or less down the middle of Gaza and west of the line is where the Palaestinians are. East of the line, there are very few of them. What was actually projected was for the whole of Gaza. The promise to them is that they will have a life that is wholesome and that is connected to the rest of the world and
connected to the rest of the Palestinian state. Obviously, I think it's so important to be very, very practical about how large is the distance from where we are today to where the vision of a Palestinian should be. Was
that that should drive the most powerful. It's interesting that you referred to the speech by Jerrek Krishna, the Palestinian chairman of the Technocratic Group, spoke to the DeVos Ali Shad, Yeah, it spoke to the DeVos conference and spoke about how he understood the plan that was being presented, and he was giving his authority and legitimacy behind that. But I've
got to be acutely content. Every week I have a meeting with our team who are in Gaza, maybe every fortnight now because I'm away this week, and the very practical concerns of staying alive are still there because of the health give him that.
So much is unknown, and there is this massive gap between the immediate needs you're talking about and the ultimate vision as set out by Jared Kushner. Is it the
¶ Tony Blair and the Board of Peace
right moment for Tony Blair to back the administration's plans for gard You get.
Him on your show. He's more than capable of talking for himself.
Request is all I'm very happy to do that I'll.
Say that this is definitely the sort of interview in which he would thrive.
Have you had a conversation with him about it, That's what.
I'mauring briefly last week. He's been very, very committed for a very very long time to the idea that there cannot be security for Israel unless there are rights and dignity and statehood for Palestinians. And they cannot be stated with dignity for Palestinians unless there is security for Israel. So he'll have to speak about this. You'll have to ask him about what he's doing and how he's how he sees it playing it.
Do you caution him? Because you have teams who are in Gaza, you are directly connected to living conditions for Palestinians today, would you caution him in how fully signed up he is to the Steve Wikoff and Jared Kushnak plan, which he clearly is, because he said he believes in their way.
Every time I see him, this is what we're seeing today, this is what we're seeing.
How does he respond?
He says, I'm on it, I'm on it. I want to I want to hear it, and I want to be on it, and I mean that's the truth. So that's all I can tell you. He's got no official position, he's not. It's the Palestinians who've been nominated who are in taking actions on the ground. But you need to get him on your show. He's got talent, that guy. You know, he's got a future ahead of him. So you want to go and get him on your show and give him a bit of a platform.
It's not for want of try say that. The wider picture in all of this, he is on the executive board of the Board of Peace, which it feels like the Americans are putting forward as an alternative to the UN. Is that the case?
Do you think, Well, there's the Gaza element of it, which was mandated by a UN Security Council resolution that's got the standing of the UN behind it. I think we need a stronger UN, not a weaker UN. There are internal reasons for the UN, but there's also the point the UN is only strong as strong as its member states allow it to be. The gridlock in the Security Council, really since twenty fourteen, since the Russian invasion of Crimea, in some ways a bit before that, has
undermined that institution. But I think it's still got unique legitimacy and credibility as an institution, and it's incredibly important for putting If the American anchor has been pulled up on the global system, we need to put out more buoys to stabilize the boat. And the UN is an important part of that.
But do you think the US is trying to circumvent it by set up the Board of Peace, by inviting Vladimir Putin, Victor Auban, the president of viel Us, all sorts of people who you would not associate with the best interests of peace and security.
Yeah. Well, of course. Now, one of the things about being a running humanitarian organization is there's impartiality, there's neutrality. I've got all sorts of things I've said in my political life about what I think of these actors leading a humanitarian organization. I have to stick to my lane. I know that the US administration have withdrawn from the World Health Organization, and I've said that's damaging because the US is a potent and positive force in global health.
I'm not going to get into what might or might not, because the truth is, while the mandate of the executive Board in respect of Gaza is quite clear. The wider debates in international diplomacy about what is the Board of Peace and how's it going to work? That hasn't happened yet.
Do you think Tony Blair knows fully what the aims the Board of Peace?
Well, he knows what his job is in respect of the executive which he's on, and so as I say, get him on, I'm sorry that I'm not interesting enough for you to have to ask what he's going to think.
Trust me, there's plenty in your ballpark that we're interested in. I do wonder though, running a big international organization, your don is a crucial right. Your work without them can't happen. USA has been shut down. In the UK, a labor government run by people you know well. Your own brother is a senior minister in that government is choosing to fund its defense pledges by taking money from the aid budget. What did you think when you saw that last year?
I didn't like that, obviously, and I said, so the needs that you've referred to that are on our watch list are growing, but there's been a fifty percent cut in humanitarian aid in the last year. That means lower food rations in the World Food Program means we close a program for boys and girls to get educated in Afghanistan for three hundred thous boys and girls. It means that Sudanese refugees in South Sudan don't get a health center.
So I can see what those cuts are doing, and the UK cuts are only just coming in, and so what I have to do is not just figure out, of course, I have to figure out how does a one point five billion dollar organization become a one point one billion dollar organization. And we've had to do that
very briskly over the last year. But I've also had to figure out with our teams, how do we remain on the front foot for the virtues of impact, innovation, cost effectiveness that make us a really potent forcing people's lives. And that's what we're focused on. We're focused on the role of the World Bank because that has a critical role in fragile and conflict states where disbursement is difficult. We're focused on the European Union, which has not cut
its SADE budget. It's interesting they have seven year budgets in the EU. They've not cut the budget running to twenty twenty eight, and they're increasing the budget twenty eight to thirty five. So we need to make sure that their money is going as far as possible, including by cooperation with the UK. We have to make sure that organizations like the Global Alliance on Vaccines and Humanization with whom we partner, they're taking the money as far as possible.
These are your friends in the UK government who are making these decisions. Some up your emotions disappointment, Yeah, discussed.
¶ Cuts to foreign aid
No, they don't pretend that this is a choice that they wanted to make or a good choice that they're in. They do it in sorrow rather than in glee and.
To keep the Americans happy because the defense spending pledge is important.
Yeah, but I think the defense pledge that we're making is driven by the actions of Russia more than the actions of America. Let's be absolutely clear about that. In the nineteen nineties and the two thousands, the ability of Russia to threaten European security wasn't understood in the way that it is understood today. But anyway, the point is the government's done something that I disagree with it. I'm far from happy about it.
So what are your conversations like? Do you keep voicing it or have you.
They're still an issue. How much of the so called overse aid budget is going on support for refugees in the.
UK too much?
Too much. What I want to say to people is two dollars and ten cents to deliver a vaccine dose in East Africa. That's what it costs US. We delivered twenty four million of those vaccine doses for two dollars and ten cents, and I want to take on the aid doesn't work argument, because when you vaccinate a kid two million zero dose kids in four countries in East Africa, including Sudan, that's a life benefit. If you don't vaccinate that kid, it's a life sentence for them. Severe and
moderate acute malnutrition. We've got forty five million children today who are severely or moderately acutely malinarished. We know how to address that, and by the way, we've shown how to address it with a thirty percent increase in cost effectiveness and cost efficiency. So my job is to say, here's an absolutely copper bottomed investment that anyone would think it is a good investment.
You speak so passionately about this, and yet I know they're a congressman in the us who've gone characterize the work of the ir C as theft and larsseny and do you get exhausted in the process of having.
You We're all getting younger, aren't we, So it's easier to the No. What I'd say to them is, don't take it from me. Let's come and meet our clients. Come on, meet our.
Yeah, but they're not going to do I give up no remondering if you get ground down by that's really what I'm wondering.
I'm quite maybe that goes back to thinking that one's lucky rather than un lucky. And I don't know if I was ground down, I wouldn't be learning anything. If you're not learning anything, you don't do it. You do jobs until you stop learning in them.
I think you've you came to the IRC job with lots of experience in politics, right at the highest level of being Foreign Secretory, one of the greatest offices of the state. So as you look at the Labor government now eighteen months after getting elected, what is your analysis of what's gone wrong for them?
Well, first all I have to say, it's not all
¶ "Challenging period" for UK Labour, Starmer
gone wrong. I know where you're going.
You'd acknowledge that things have gone right.
It's been a very challenging period and that have been mistakes made, of course, And I think that the world has changed very very fast in the eighteen months and the world has changed very very fast since they wrote their manifesto. And when the world changes, you have to change, and that's the process that they're undergoing at the moment. I think that they're going to have to give clearer direction.
They're going to have to amp up the dosage on some of the interventions they're doing on areas like Europe. They're gonna have to.
Do more, much more, closer to you, much more.
And they're going to have to explain what they're doing. And when I was in politics, people used to say, if you're explaining, you're losing. I think Ronald Reagan said that now, if you're not explaining, you're not on the pitch. And so I think that there's there's work to be done. But I know them to be high integrity, very methodical, quite self critical, and very determined.
Would you guard them against having an agenda set by reform so they focus on the kinds of core issues for reform and the Conservatives like immigration.
Well, I think without losing all of the audience who
¶ Threats from Reform and Andy Burnham
might have to me happily our confessed to being an Arsenal supporter, and arsen Wenger once said that his philosophy of management was never set your game plan by what you think the opposition are going to do. Set the game plan by what you want to do. And so the arsen Wenger answer to your question would be, you don't take your agenda from reform, you take a gender from the people you're trying to serve.
But eighteen months ago you must have been so happy to see your party succeeds.
Still happy to see my party in government because.
Honestly, but they're not doing well in the opinion polls, and if they continue to not do well, Nigel Farish could be the next Prime Minister of the UK. Would a new Labor leader make a difference to therefore.
I'm not going anywhere any that we've got a Labor leader. He's fought and one a general election with a majority of one hundred and forty five, were charged by the British public with delivering on an agenda that improves the kind of and I want to come back to this point. When the world changes, we have to change. There's a lot of change going on. Take it from the Trump administrations themselves. They've set out to have a revolution in
global affairs. That means we have to do more for ourselves. It doesn't mean we break the American alliance, but we have to do more for ourselves. We have to do more with Europeans, we have to do more with names, We have to do more around the world.
What did you think when they've blocked Andy Burnham from running as.
A lot I wouldn't have done that.
But you wouldn't have done it? Why because it creates bad blood? No.
I mean, he's a talented leader, politician, and you want your talented people in the team on the pitch scoring goals or if they're defenders stopping girls.
Wonder where you see your home? Is it?
Home is here?
So you're definitely going to come back.
Well, trouble is, you're not always living at home. That's the thing. So I still sound like an Englishman in New York too. Point of phrase. We make our own history, but not as we choose. As someone once wrote, I feel very committed to the country. To this country's given my family everything. As we started this conversation, gave me Louise, So that's your wife.
Yeah, as America felt like home in the last fifteen years. I know your son's been my home.
Our kids were born there, adopted there. So I first went to America in nineteen seventy seven as a twelve year old for a year with my family. I've seen that. I mean the country is an extraordinary place. I mean it's a teeming, thriving, driving, ambitious place and seductive.
I would say it's very easier to become attached to it.
I wouldn't say I wouldn't say seductive.
It's pretty, you know, tough place.
It's sincere, sincere when they swear at you in New York. So it's been our home, and I think that one has to have a profound sense of gratitude for the life experiences has given me. But you asked me a question, where's home? And I said, well, here's home, So that there's there's What do.
You think your next job might be? Is it public service? Is it private sector?
Sometimes young people come, and younger people than me come and say what ill careers advice hasn't been my strong point. I wouldn't say. I always say the same thing. Look,
¶ What next for Miliband?
I want to make sure that I'm doing something that does the maximum to advance the things I believe in consistent with the absolute loyalty and commitment I made to my own family to be there for them. And you don't know what comes up. You just don't. I haven't got a napkin with the dates and roles. So I feel very lucky to be leading the International Rescue Committee. I learn from my colleagues and from what we do. I put myself into it, and so I'm grateful they've put up with me.
And do you think there is a Is there something in politics that you ever yearn for that kind of power or is it part of your life?
Always say to people, what's the difference between government and your where you have more power in government, but you have more blockages on doing anything about it. If you're in an NGO, you see the people, the dangers, you lose sight of the big picture. Doing my job today, there are thirty four million people last year who got help. Did I transform their lives? Did I find their husbands not necessarily? Did our teams give them vaccinations? Did they
give them a chance in life? Did they deliver life saving and life changing interventions? Yeah? They did. So it's a balance, isn't it. And I don't know what my next job is.
¶ Relationship with Hilary Clinton
Do you still talk to some of the people who you work closely within exactly that period. Hillary Clinton was the Secretary of State at that time when you were scary.
Yeah, of course, and you still talk to her, Yeah, of course. And we don't just sit around saying, oh, it'd be much better in our day. I mean, it's hard. It's hard.
You don't just say that, you do a bit of that.
I bet did I say? We don't just say that, or we don't say that. I think that all of us want to have a voice in our own way, and I am lucky I can have a voice. But more important, our teams can do something, and if I can help them do it, that's good.
David miliband, thank you, thank you, And that's the Michelle Hussein Show for this week. The producers are Jessica Beck and Chris mark You. Video editing is by Andy Hayward, social media by Alex Morgan, Production assistance by Jennifer Seeley, The sound engineers Richard Ward, Music is by Bart Walshall, and the executive producer is Louisa Lewis. At Bloomberg Weekend. The editorial director of Audio and Special Projects is Brendan
Francis Newnham, and our executive editor is Catherine Bell. If you'd like to contact us, there's an email in the show notes, as well as a link to these conversations in video, and you'll find the illustrated text versions at bloomberg dot com slash Weekend. Until the next time, goodbye.