Our cynical author casts an eye over Ed Miliband's energy policy and finds the cause

Ed Miliband. What to make of Ed Miliband?

He is clearly well on the way to becoming the worst energy secretary since the role was invented in 1974. In those simpler days we had a secretary of state for energy. Now that government departments have become slogans in their own right, Miliband rejoices in the title of secretary of state for energy security and net zero.

Which is interesting. Because virtually every decision he has taken since entering office has diminished our energy security while pursuing the chimaera of a completely net zero energy system and a net zero UK.

Decarbonising the grid (too expensive, won’t happen)? Check.

Asking households to replace perfectly sound boilers with expensive heat pumps (unaffordable for most)? Check.

Opposing nuclear (despite it being clean, long term energy)? Check.

Opposing fracking because it might give your neighbourhood a little rumble (about the same as an HGV going past your house, Swift is told)? Check.

Concreting over our very small number of existing fracking sites (just why?) Check.

It would otiose to prolong this list (although Swift could – we haven’t even touched on car policy, the £8.3bn white elephant of GB Energy, over-taxing the North Sea oil and gas industry, indeed regulating it out of existence).

The cumulative result of these policies will be higher bills for households and industry, a greater reliance on importing energy from abroad, and a minimal impact on global emissions while our chums in China and India (and indeed Germany, another energy policy basket case) go on polluting.

It is tempting to just conclude that Ed is mad. In fact there might be something in this. His official photograph is for example unnerving (it’s on Wikipedia if you want to confirm this).

One of Swift’s friends attended a party some years ago when Ed was not yet an MP. It was a lively studentish affair. Perhaps someone was smoking a spliff, who knows? Maybe some heavy petting (as they used to say in the list of prohibited activities in swimming pools) going on?

Anyway, when Ed realised that someone was about to take a photo of the gathering, he executed a smart leap to behind the back of the sofa and crouched there until the danger had passed.

Dear readers, I submit that this is not normal behaviour. It was a little early to start image control. There was ambition there.

But to understand the man, we must cherchez la famille. Ed (and his elder brother David) were brought up in an intellectual household, but one of quite the wrong sort. Someone once described their father Ralph Miliband as ‘one of the best known academic Marxists of his generation’. This was apparently intended as a compliment.

Swift has no particular animus against Miliband père - a refugee from Nazi persecution, who served in the Royal Navy in the Second World War, including taking part in D-Day  – other than the fact he was wrong about almost every political issue and bequeathed to his sons, if not his precise attitudes (enthusiasm for Karl Marx, revolutionary socialism and a contempt for bourgeois democracy and the traditional Labour Party being his stock-in-trade) but a pursuit of unattainable goals that impedes sensible policy-making, but which is very characteristic of Marxism in both theory and practice.

Dear readers, surely this is absolutely Ed's energy policy defined?

There is also just something odd about the two brothers. There is the food thing (banana for D, bacon sandwich for E). There is the complete lack of empathy or understanding of the views of political opponents. They fail the ‘would you have a pint down the pub with this politician test’ as comprehensively as Jeremy Corbyn – a politician whom they both resemble more than they would like to admit.

There is a glimmer of hope. Sir Keir Starmer is apparently quite unamused by Ed’s energy antics, now that they are coming into clearer view. Just as with welfare, the need to increase defence spending might impede or severely curtail GB Energy. Indeed, when the Labour government has a reshuffle, it is suggested that Ed’s head will roll.

Unfortunately, he has already done more damage to energy policy in eight months in office than most ministers could have achieved in eight years. What a way to end your career.