How Ed Miliband became Britain’s most divisive government minister

3 months ago 4

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LONDON — Six weeks on from Labour’s resounding election victory, no one in Keir Starmer’s Cabinet has moved quite as quickly as Ed Miliband.

A former (failed) Labour leader, who critics deemed too left-wing and awkward to win over the British public, Miliband today finds himself a powerful figure in a centrist Labour government, with a commanding majority and mandate to deliver the change he is convinced the U.K. badly needs.

The new energy secretary has wasted no time. In his first month in office he introduced legislation to create a publicly owned power company, GB Energy, lifted a de facto ban on new onshore wind turbines in England, authorized the construction of three giant solar farms and installed a so-called “mission control” unit in his department to deliver arguably the most ambitious of Labour’s five core “missions” — decarbonizing Britain’s power system by 2030.

“When you think about the key announcements that have really hit the ground running — they’re Ed’s,” said one delighted left-leaning Labour MP.

Yet while no one in the Cabinet has been as proactive as Miliband, neither has anyone attracted so much opposition fury.

Miliband — once maligned as “Red Ed” in right-wing newspapers — has again become a lightning rod for criticism, the subject of hatchet jobs in right-wing newspapers and Conservative MPs’ top tip for first exit from Starmer’s Cabinet.

Veteran broadcaster Andrew Neil went so far as to predict that “at its worst, the energy and climate crusade on which [Miliband] is embarking … could at some stage bring the government down.” A local council in the east of England county of Suffolk — home to one of the solar farms he approved in the face of local opposition — is already taking legal action against him.

For better or worse, Miliband stands out.

Polling by Savanta, shared with POLITICO, finds that the energy secretary is better known than other Cabinet big beasts including Chancellor Rachel Reeves, Deputy PM Angela Rayner, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper and Health Secretary Wes Streeting. A favorite of Labour voters (with whom he enjoys a net favorability score of +25), he is deeply unpopular among Conservative and Reform backers. Reform voters put his favorability at -50, lower than for most other prominent Labour figures.

“Our research suggests that Ed Miliband is one of the better known and more divisive of Labour’s new Cabinet ministers,” said Chris Hopkins, political research director at Savanta. “As a former Labour leader, he is likely to carry much more baggage with the public than a newer face.”

With green policies under pressure all over the Western world, Labour’s political opponents view Miliband and his strong commitment to climate action as a potential political weakness, arguing the costs of the energy transition could weigh heavily on ordinary voters, that well-paying, unionized oil and gas jobs won’t be replaced, and that government diktat will ride roughshod over local communities to build clean energy infrastructure.

Miliband, claims Conservative MP and former Climate Minister Graham Stuart, sees climate policy “as some sort of religious crusade” and is therefore “a real danger to our ability to maintain the political consensus to deliver net zero.”

“The danger of someone who puts their zealotry ahead of practical implementation is that it will create more and more enemies, not only of him … but actually of the project overall,” Stuart said.

The energy secretary’s allies insist he’s aware of the political danger. His green ambitions, they say, are alloyed to a keen awareness of the cost-of-living pressures the country is under and the need to protect oil and gas communities.

But some fear turbulence lies ahead. “We haven’t hit any rocky roads yet,” said the left-leaning MP quoted above. “Things could change.”

Starmer alliance

Previously hounded by reports of rifts with Starmer and his fiscally prudent chancellor Reeves, in government Miliband appears to enjoy their wholehearted support. Starmer stood shoulder to shoulder with his energy secretary at a major press event in north west England just three weeks after taking power, where the pair launched GB Energy’s new offshore wind partnership with the Crown Estate.

Miliband, said one pro-Starmer MP — granted anonymity, like others quoted in this piece, to speak frankly about internal party politics — is “important to the political coalition that makes the Starmer government work.”

“He and Keir have a very good relationship,” added Ayesha Hazarika, a Labour peer and former adviser to Miliband who knows both men. “Even when people were briefing madly against [Miliband] … he and Keir were always in a good place. They’ve got a real mutual affection and respect for each other.”

A protracted clash over ditching a £28 billion green spending target is ancient history, party insiders insist. Reeves won that argument, but Miliband’s agenda remains bold even without the big sums of money once attached to it.

“People often want to pretend there are divisions, for the sake of soap opera politics,” insisted an aide to Reeves. “But it just isn’t there.”

Under Reeves and Starmer, climate action is “absolutely at the core of the government’s agenda,” a buoyant Miliband told an audience of green activists and renewable industry lobbyists in London in late July —“much, much more” so than when Gordon Brown was prime minister.

Miliband’s first stint as climate secretary was under Brown from 2008 to 2010, when he introduced the Climate Change Act, legislation that underpins the U.K.’s binding targets.

But for many voters, the abiding image of him is of the awkward opposition leader who failed to convince the public at the 2015 general election. An infamous photo of him grappling with a bacon sandwich became so emblematic of the public perception of Miliband, it has its own Wikipedia page.

He had “a really pretty brutal time as leader,” says Hazarika (who was there.)

“Having every bit of his personality, every bit of his face … literally every inch of his psychology, being, and physicality scrutinized [and] slagged off. He had really dark times,” says Hazarika.

After losing the 2015 election as Labour leader, Miliband spent several years in the political wilderness, becoming a vocal advocate for stronger action on climate — but also of a wider need for the state to champion “big and irreversible change equal to the moment,” as he put it in his 2021 book, “Go Big.”

The book and his podcast, “Reasons to be Cheerful” cemented his new status as a favorite of the green left. But with the global energy market increasingly insecure, and great powers including the U.S. and the EU embracing industrial strategy as a route out of economic stagnation, many — even on the party’s center-right — think Miliband’s moment has finally come.

“A lot of our voters are much more left wing on the economy — in favor of big, bold economic change — than you might think,” said the pro-Starmer MP. “We need to not lose sight of what it means to put money into people’s pockets, to deliver the kind of change they want, that radically changes their situation.

“That’s the role Ed plays, both in terms of signal and in terms of substance.”

For now at least, Labour figures remain publicly united behind the Miliband agenda. But fault-lines already exist. Labour-allied union bosses have warned about the potential impact of the government’s oil and gas phase-out plans on jobs. Others believe Miliband will need more money for his clean power plans — potentially reopening a rift with Reeves and the Treasury.

Stuart, the former Tory climate minister, said the government will need to spend “many tens of billion more” on carbon capture technology alone if it wants to decarbonize the power grid by 2030.

An aide to Miliband said: “Ed Miliband and the Labour government have been elected with a mandate to make Britain a clean energy superpower — because clean energy is how we end Britain’s vulnerability to the expensive global fossil fuel markets, that drove the cost of living crisis. Everything Ed and this Labour government is doing on energy is focused on delivering cleaner, cheaper power for the British people, and rebuilding the strength of British industry as we do so.”

Green crusade

Among the wider U.K. green movement, Miliband remains a much-admired fellow traveler.

“I think we’re very fortunate to have him now in that role,” said environmental campaigner and BBC broadcaster Chris Packham. “I’ve known him and listened to him for some time. He’s on the right side and we need to give him the scope to do what he’s capable of doing within government.”

The kind of “irreversible change” Miliband wrote about in 2021 already appears to be on his agenda in government. The legislation underpinning Great British Energy — the publicly owned power company — would make the organization “a settled part of the constitution” and “very, very hard for any future government to unpick,” he has said.

Combined with the 2030 clean power plan, GBE will, he hopes, free the U.K. from dependence on fossil fuel for electricity generation, lowering and stabilizing household bills.

Many energy market experts endorse the theory — but Labour’s specific claim that it will save households £300 by 2030 has raised eyebrows.

“They need to be careful with the promises around that figure,” said one energy industry figure, granted anonymity to speak about a politically sensitive topic. “Prices are likely to stay high for some time.”

If he succeeds, Miliband will have won a big prize — not just helping household budgets and boosting Labour’s re-election hopes, but proving that doing so can be consistent with ambitious climate action.

Mat Lawrence, director of the Common Wealth think tank — and someone who Miliband has acknowledged as an influence — pointed to the statement Miliband issued to staff at the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero shortly after taking office, in which he said his “twin passions” were “resolving the economic inequality that scars the country and … tackling the climate crisis that imperils our world.”

Lawrence predicted Miliband would aim to show “a real sensitivity and robustness to making sure that ordinary people don’t pay for the transition, and making it as fair and as equitable … as possible.”

That is what “the Labour government is fundamentally judged on,” he added.

“Do people feel better off in 2029?”

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