Labour’s Energy Secretary is a total liability. He shouldn’t be in government, let alone in charge of something as vital as the UK’s energy system. His lunatic net zero charge is destroying jobs and businesses, and forcing the economy its knees. No serious country would put someone like this in charge of national infrastructure. Yet Keir Starmer did.

Voters already had their say on Miliband in 2015, when he led Labour to electoral annihilation. Unfortunately, Starmer has rewarded serial failure by handing him one of the most important jobs in government. It’s yet another act of economic self-sabotage by our useless PM.

Miliband is playing ideological games with the nation’s prosperity, and like Starmer and Reeves, he can only justify what he’s doing by telling bare-faced lies to our faces.

During the election campaign, he repeatedly claimed his Clean Power 2030 mission would cut £300 off the average household energy bill. Here’s what’s actually happened.

When Labour took power in July 2024, the energy price cap for a typical dual-fuel household was £1,568. Today it’s £1,755. That’s a rise of £187, despite wholesale gas prices actually falling over the same period. Worse, the cost is only going to grow.

I accept that the UK needs to move away from fossil fuels. Climate change is real and visible. But the transition is complex and costly, and needs to be managed carefully. Miliband is forcing it through at a reckless pace and causing chaos along the way.

Like a nerdy teenager reading Spiderman comics in his bedroom, Miliband is convinced he can save the world through his self-proclaimed “clean energy superpower mission”.

But he ignored the bit where Spiderman says “great power comes great responsibility”. Miliband doesn’t care about the damage he’s doing by irresponsibly shutting down North Sea oil and gas exploration.

That might be acceptable if Britain could instantly replace it with abundant, cheap, home-produced energy, but it can’t. The UK still depends heavily on gas which means we’ll simply import more from countries like Qatar. That makes authoritarian states richer and Britain poorer.

No country in the world is deliberately wrecking its own oil and gas sector like this. Even climate-conscious Norway continues to drill and invest, using the revenues to fund vastly superior public services to ours, and the green transition.

It doesn’t even work environmentally. Imported gas is often produced to lower standards and shipped thousands of miles, increasing emissions. That’s a net loss for the planet, not a gain. It’s also a disaster for jobs, particularly in Scotland and the north-east of England, where whole communities depend on the energy sector.

As power prices rise further, even more businesses will shut or move overseas to countries with lower standards and higher emissions. That’s a loss for Britain and the climate.

Now, finally, we can put a price on the Miliband is doing. The National Energy System Operator has estimated that achieving net zero on his timescale will cost us a staggering £350billion.

This is economic vandalism on an unimaginable scale. If Miliband was a foreign power, we’d be forced to declare war on him.

Yet instead, he’s running the show. Destroying jobs, livelihoods and businesses, and making Britain poorer by the day. If that wasn’t crazy enough, he’s now frontrunner to replace Starmer as PM. Proof that Labour has lost its collective mind.