Ed Miliband specialises in driving people nuts. He almost seems to treat it as a badge of honour. Critics are dismissed as foaming right-wingers or shills for Big Oil whose arguments don’t even deserve a hearing. Miliband simply sticks his fingers in his ears and carries on. In fact it’s worse than that. He’s turned energy policy into another front in the endless political culture war, pushing ever more extreme ideas to fire up Labour’s left-wing base.
The collateral damage doesn’t seem to trouble him. Businesses destroyed. Jobs lost. Tax revenues collapsing. That’s the price Britain pays for Miliband’s ideological crusade. Miliband has just been ripped apart by the country’s most respected independent energy expert. Professor Dieter Helm of Oxford University is no frothing right-winger. He’s a serious, measured analyst who has advised governments for decades. Even he has had enough.
Helm has issued an urgent warning that Labour’s green transition is doing the opposite of what Miliband promises. Instead of boosting energy security, it is weakening it. At a moment when global tensions are rising and the world edges towards World War III, he’s left Britain terrifyingly exposed.
Helm’s verdict on Labour’s energy policy is devastating. Far from building resilience, Miliband is leaving Britain economically weaker and strategically vulnerable. Even this sober academic can’t resist mocking Miliband saying: “The Iran war has displayed that the emperor of the clean-energy superpower has no clothes.”
He also ridicules Miliband’s promise that the transition will cut bills, scornfully referring to his now “legendary claim” that households would save £300. But here’s the biggest problem. The one Miliband totally ignores.
Despite massive spending on renewables, Britain still relies on gas to keep the lights on. Wind and solar power are intermittent. When the wind drops or clouds roll in, the system still needs reliable backup. That back-up is gas.
Yet Miliband is simultaneously crushing domestic production through punitive taxes while blocking new North Sea developments. Britain will burn gas for decades to come, but instead of producing it ourselves we are becoming increasingly dependent on imports.
That means lost jobs, lost investment and lost tax revenues. Helm highlights another grim reality. Britain now has the highest industrial electricity prices in the developed world. Energy-intensive industries are being hammered. Refineries in Grangemouth and Hull have shut. Fertiliser plants, fibreglass production and large parts of the steel sector have been scaled back or closed.
That means fewer skilled jobs, more imports and a weaker economy. High energy costs destroy competitiveness and undermine the industries that support Britain’s wider economy, including defence manufacturing. Frankly, Miliband doesn’t give a damn.
Helm also points to Britain’s alarming lack of resilience. The country has almost no gas storage. A single pipeline supplies roughly 30% of Britain’s gas from Norway. Imagine if that’s cut. Windfarms could even cripple our defence systems.
Helm is no enemy of renewables. He supports low-carbon power and the transition to cleaner energy. But he understands something Miliband refuses to acknowledge. A modern economy needs energy that is secure, affordable and reliable. Britain has none of those things. And Miliband still doesn’t care.
Energy bills remain painfully high. Industry is shrinking. The country’s energy security is shot. Miliband refuses to listen. There comes a point when rational debate runs out of road. So I’ll call him what he is. A total muppet.
