‘I wasn’t bold enough’: Ed Miliband on losing, leading and the future of Labour

The former Labour leader has always been big on ideas, but never had the chance to put them into practice. He talks about his new vision for politics

• Ed Miliband: I was 50 when I finally mastered the art of riding a bike
• On your bike! Ed Miliband on Britain's much-needed cycling revolution

Ed Miliband was a cabinet minister before he learned how to ride a bike properly. He had mastered staying upright on two wheels as a child, but not much more. At around the same age he also picked up the rudiments of socialism, from the group of intellectuals and leftwing politicians that visited his father Ralph, an eminent Marxist academic. It was not until the summer of 2015, when the British electorate had firmly rejected Ed Miliband's application to be prime minister, that he discovered the simple pleasure of cycling.

That story, the late bloom on a bike, is one of many personal vignettes seeded into Go Big, Miliband's book about policy ideas that can change the world, and how to put them into practice. (Getting people out of their cars and on to cycle lanes is one chapter.) Go Big is not a memoir, but it does hint at a personal journey. Does the prescription contained in the book's title imply that, as Labour leader, he went too small?