He went on to Lancaster University, where he lived in Morecambe and Galgate, graduating in 1979 with a Bachelor of Arts degree with Upper Second Class Honours in History.

[2] After leaving university, he returned to Newcastle where, with Martin Spence, he operated a small radical bookshop in the Westgate Road, called Days of Hope (the shop was given the Spoonerised nickname Haze of Dope).

[4] From 1988, Milburn co-ordinated a campaign to defend shipbuilding in Sunderland, Tyne and Wear, and was elected Chairman of Newcastle-upon-Tyne Central Constituency Labour Party.

In Parliament, Milburn allied himself with the Blairite modernisers in the Labour Party, close to Tony Blair, MP for the next-door constituency of Sedgefield.

"[5] In 1997 he was appointed Minister of State at the Department of Health, an important post in which he had responsibility for driving through Private Finance Initiative deals on hospitals.

In 2002 Milburn introduced NHS foundation trusts, originally envisaged as a new form of not-for-profit provider[7] and "described at the time as a sort of halfway house between the public and private sectors".

Following his resignation as Secretary of State for Health, Milburn took a post for £30,000 a year as an adviser to Bridgepoint Capital, a venture capital firm heavily involved in financing private health-care firms moving into the NHS, including Alliance Medical, Match Group, Medica and the Robinia Care Group.

On 8 September 2006, after Tony Blair had announced his intention to step down within a year, Charles Clarke suggested Milburn as leader in place of Brown.

[15] Between January and July 2009, Milburn chaired a governmental commission on social mobility, the Panel on Fair Access to the Professions.

[16] The Panel reported in July 2009 with recommendations to improve social mobility by acting at every life stage – including through schools, universities, internship practices and recruitment processes.

"[19] Despite the change of government following the May 2010 general election, it was reported in August 2010 that Milburn had been offered a role in the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition as "social mobility tsar".

[21] In 2011, Milburn contributed to The Purple Book (alongside other key figures in the Labour Party such as Ed Miliband, Peter Mandelson, Jacqui Smith, Liam Byrne, Tessa Jowell, Tristram Hunt, Stephen Twigg, Rachel Reeves and Liz Kendall).

[34] Early in 2015, Milburn intervened in the British election campaign to criticise Labour's health plans, which would limit private sector involvement in the NHS.