Doncaster MP Ed Miliband received a £38k advance for a book on ‘how to fix our world’

A Doncaster MP was paid an advance fee of almost £40,000 for a new book due out this summer.

Ed Miliband the Labour MP for Doncaster North announced on Friday that his new book, Go Big: How to Fix Our World, will be published in early June.

‘Impossible to calculate’

The MP register of interests, where politicians must list any income, donations or gifts they receive outside of their parliamentary work, shows that Mr Miliband received an advance payment of £38,950 for the book.

The fee was registered on 12 March last year, with the MP noting that it would be “impossible to calculate” how many hours work it would entail.

Generally, MPs are asked to provide an indication of the time commitments involved in work completed outside of Parliament.

The former Labour leader says the book will offer a series of solutions to many issues which face the modern world, including the climate crisis, inequality and “demographic change”.

‘I’ve written a book’

On Friday (12 Mar), he Tweeted: “I’ve written a book…. No not (yet) my memoirs. It’s about the ideas that can change our world” and included a link to pre-order the book.

On the purpose of the book, he said: “Take any economic, social or democratic problem and there is an answer to it somewhere in the world. You just need to go look for it.”

After losing the 2015 general election Mr Miliband stepped down from leadership of the Labour Party, and soon afterwards set up the Reasons to be Cheerful podcast with broadcaster and friend, Geoff Lloyd.

As well as representing Doncaster North in Parliament, Mr Miliband is also the Shadow Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, as well as the Shadow President for COP26, the global climate change summit due to be hosted in the UK later this year.