Professor Marc Stears influence on Ed Milibands conference speech

Marc Stears has been in the news recently on the extent to which he has influenced Ed Milibands recent One Nation speech, delivered at the Labour party conference in Brighton.

The Guardian featured a profile of Marc, entitled Marc Stears: the university friend who helped to shape Ed Milibands speech (2 October), which said The man at the heart of the debate, helping Miliband to write the speech, was Marc Stears, one of the Labour leaders oldest friends, whom he first met when they were both studying at Oxford in the 1980s. This is crucial to Miliband because he has a relationship with Stears that is rooted deeper than the sometimes shallow or fickle fortunes of contemporary Labour politics. The full article can be read here.

An article in the Independent (7 October) entitled Game on! Meet Ed the Contender also stated that Marc Stears, a friend from university, now professor of political theory at Oxford, helped, but aides insist it was written by the leader himself, at his black dining room table, with sons Daniel and Sam playing at his feet. The full article for this can be read here.

You can also hear Marc talking about his experiences at Westminster in his lecture podcast recorded at the annual Oxford University Alumni Weekend.