Mr Miliband exerts enormous unseen and unrecognised power over this government.
It is his extreme view of the need for the UK to go it alone to decarbonise that lies behind the failure to control public spending, the bad balance of trade deficit, the shortfall of tax revenue and the rapid deindustrialisation of the UK.
His policies accelerate the shut down of our oil and gas industry, close steel furnaces and car plants, push up energy prices and leave us increasingly dependent on imports. These policies mean an increase in world CO 2 so they are self defeating. It is the dearest and cruellest virtue signalling in our history. Jobs are destroyed, bills put up and oil and gas revenue spurned all to be able to report CO generated at home has gone down, as it surges elsewhere to supply us.
More and more people fear his views. The Chancellor fails to stop many of the huge bills for carbon capture and storage and green subsidies. The Business Secretary fails to rescue factories and blast furnaces from the long reach of misdirected net zero policy.
The TUC states in vain net zero must not be at the cost of hundreds of thousands of industrial jobs.
The public disbelieves much of what Mr Miliband tells us. Who believes in the pre election promise of £300 off our electricity bills when more renewable power comes along? Why does the government now go quiet on that pledge? Why instead did they put electricity up by 10% at the last review, and why plan a further increase? After all we are told they are adding lots more renewable power.
When Mr Miliband endlessly repeats that renewable power is cheaper than fossil fuel, people ask why then it takes subsidies and special terms to get people to put in more renewables? They ask if he has remembered to include the extra costs of needing back up generation for when there is no wind or sun. They ask has he factored in the costs of installing and maintaining all the extra grid capacity it will take to bring wind power from Scotland and the North Sea, and to handle very variable levels of renewable output?
Many experts think the task of removing all CO2 from our electricity generation by 2030 cannot be done. Indeed, even the government has backtracked to 95% CO 2 free despite Mr Miliband’s intentions. The required huge increases in renewable power and grid cables and pylons look difficult to reach in five years.
Worst of all is the absence of credible cost figures for this huge change, and the selective and limited provision in state budgets. How come when he arrived in office he had to ask for costings and plans when pre election he told us he had a plan and it was all included in the Labour tax promises and figures?
Ed Miliband has been condemned for his net zero policies by John Redwood, inset.
GB News
The £19bn for carbon capture and storage is difficult to finance under current budget limits. The likely need for much more subsidy to put in all the wind and solar is not in budgets. We read the government is now looking at a possible additional grant scheme to encourage more domestic solar. Schemes to boost more solar, more windfarms and more pylons than the market is willing to provide could require much more taxpayer support.
Electricity costs more than three times as much as gas per unit of energy. So how does getting us all to swap gas heating for electric help with our cost of living? Asking us to buy battery cars that are dearer than reliable petrol cars, only to plug them into expensive recharge points also does not help family budgets. If you add in the likelihood that when you recharge they may need to burn more gas in a power station to meet your needs it seems pointless.
It’s not just the public who cannot afford Mr Miliband. It is the government as well. The PM could sleep easier at night if he was spared the political and economic costs of these extreme policies.