𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

I’ve always had a soft spot for Ed Miliband. Unlike his leader, he looks as though he actually believes in something, even if most of us think it’s nuts. He has a nice donnish way with him, had the decency to lose that 2015 election, and then gave an elegant and genuinely lovely resignation speech. Labour leaders always become nicer when they’ve lost. So, it pains me to write something critical about him. But, sorry Ed, I have to. Who can forget the promise, for that’s what it was, that energy bills would fall under Labour, that our drive for net zero would be a cost saver, and that there was no contradiction between the switch to renewables and a booming economy?

It’s all looked far-fetched, pie in the sky even, for years on end. And now, just this morning, we learn that energy bills will be hiked by a massive £108 per household when they are already making our eyes bleed. Why? Because of a £28 billion upgrade to the energy grid, which is needed, you guessed it, to support the transition to renewables. You didn’t tell us about that, Ed, did you?

The way it looks to the average punter, me included, is that we keep being assured we have a glorious, cheap net-zero future. Only that future never arrives. So, all we can do is examine the present, and it ain’t pretty. Our electricity bills are eye-wateringly high, and staggeringly more expensive than Trump’s drill-baby-drill USA.

Many of our European competitors are so desperate for dirty old gas that they’re still shamelessly buying loads of it from Putin’s Russia so that he can drop bombs on Ukraine and threaten us all with nukes. We Brits, in contrast, remain pure in spirit, but impoverished.

And for all the talk of the UK becoming an AI superpower, which, by the way, will be fabulous if it happens, we also know that data centres eat up energy like a pack of ravenous labradors after a day in the park. And it’s not just AI. How any UK business is meant to stay competitive when paying through the nose to keep the lights on and machines running is beyond me.

Meanwhile, did Rachel Reeves ease the pressure on our wallets in her budget last week? Not really. Ok, she’s taking a few quid off energy bills, but only by raising our taxes. Go figure.

We want to lead the world in renewables, they keep saying. Well, fine. But at what cost? And even if we do achieve these net zero targets (don’t snigger), how will that make the world any cleaner when we are responsible for just 1% of global emissions?

It seems the rest of the world is having a big old laugh at us silly Brits and the hairshirt we insist on wearing. Any country with actual economic growth is burning fossil fuels at a rate of knots, while we refuse to give licences for North Sea oil exploration and get all panicky at the thought of fracking.

None of this makes Red Ed a bad person. But it does mean that he either has to explain himself an awful lot better, or accept, as the rest of us long have, that hitting net-zero will come at a cost out of all proportion with what we are able to pay. I can promise him that given the choice between paying through the nose to heat our homes or giving up this net-zero obsession, we’ll choose the latter every time.