𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

Many moons ago, I did an episode of the Alexis Conran show on Channel 5 with then Green Party leader hopeful Zack Polanski. I wasn’t told beforehand by the producers who I would be on with, but it had never bothered me before. Looking back, I imagine I was paired with him because he was trying to raise his profile for the leadership election, and I’d always got on relatively well with whoever I shared a panel with. He was perfectly polite, charming, and I must add, as dim as a cave.

At times, I was so taken aback by his ignorance that I was genuinely stunned into silence. Of course, he had come prepared with the usual platitudinous bilge. But when we got onto energy prices, he let his utter cluelessness slip by, saying something to the effect of, “I don’t know why we let gas set the marginal price for energy in this country. When I become Prime Minister, I’ll make it wind”. It was at that point that I knew that we were doomed.

Not because he wouldn’t concede my point. Indeed, gas sets the price because it’s what’s readily available and efficient when the sun isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing. Nor because he clearly had as much sense as a baby rattle. But because he’s not far off the rest of our politicians in Westminster.

Their luxury beliefs have been paid for by everyone else, and nowhere is the bill more visible than in energy. It’s impossible to overstate just how crucial energy is to everything we do. It powers our industry and heats our homes.

It keeps the hospitals lit and moves the food we eat and the water we drink. The only people who’ve never had to think about what happens when the lights go out are the ones who never imagined it could happen to them.

We spent £439million importing power from Europe in May alone, the highest monthly bill ever recorded outside the Ukraine energy crisis, and £1.7billion between January and May.

We’re on course to beat last year’s £3.6billion, half of which went to France’s state-owned EDF. On some days last week, three-quarters of the electricity keeping London and the South East going came down a cable from France and the Low Countries, and in June our own grid engineers had to ring Paris to keep the lights on.

And the greatest irony is that, because heatwaves are often associated with high-pressure zones that lead to low winds, the country’s wind farms experience lower output. Solar panels also become less efficient in high temperatures – they are tested at 25C in a laboratory and lose output by up to a fifth in real summer sun.

You couldn’t make this stuff up. Wind farms are useless when there is low wind. And solar farms aren’t great with warm weather (fire the design engineers!). When we need them the most, the energy forms we’ve ploughed so much money into don’t even work.

Ed Miliband may not be solely responsible for the sorry state of this country’s energy, but he’s certainly played a huge role. He is 56 now and is currently standing in his fourth Cabinet role. And I cannot for the life of me work out what qualified such a woefully unremarkable man to head up this country’s energy policy.

He’s never had a real job. He left Oxford in 1992, spent a year as a researcher on a Channel 4 politics programme, and by 1993 was writing speeches for Harriet Harman at the age of 23. He moved onto Gordon Brown’s team the year after that, became his special adviser at 27, and was parachuted into the safe seat of Doncaster North in 2005.

The US Secretary of Energy, former oil industry CEO Chris Wright – who has said “there is no climate crisis and we’re not in the midst of an energy transition either” – supposedly nicknamed his then-counterpart “Miliwatt”. And who can disagree?

As of last month, the man is no longer Energy Secretary. The job has passed to another busybody you haven’t heard of – Miatta Fahnbulleh, who is even keener than her predecessor on refusing new North Sea licences, and believes the climate crisis is a “crisis of capitalism”. Isn’t it awkward then, that it’s capitalists across the Channel who’ve been keeping us supplied, and charging us handsomely for the privilege?

Energy policy in this country has clearly been set by people who don’t have to worry about the consequences of a poor job. It’s the only way to explain the predicament that we’re in. Miliband, after all, hasn’t been sacked. He’s been promoted to the Foreign Office.