In what must count as one of the most bizarre acts of the current UK Government, Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero Ed Miliband has flown to China to talk about climate change. ‘UK and China restart meaningful climate change dialogue,’ announces a press release on the DESNZ website. “The global battle against the climate crisis needs China,” said the man himself in a Guardian article. “Climate action at home without pushing larger countries to do their fair share would not protect current and future generations.” Miliband, the climate hero, believes that he can convince the Chinese to follow in his footsteps. And that is not even the most absurd thing about this expedition.

Ed Miliband’s promise to the UK population is that his implementation of the Net Zero agenda will produce ‘lower bills’, guarantee ‘energy security’ and create ‘green jobs’. The centrepiece of the agenda is the ‘clean power by 2030’ policy. This will create “a future where our energy system is reliant on homegrown clean power, not fossil fuel markets controlled by dictators”, he claims. This is in contrast to “the previous Government”, which he states “left us dependent on fossil fuel markets controlled by dictators around the world, which made us price-takers, not price-makers”. In response to a challenge from Reform, Miliband claimed that the upstarts’ policies would leave the UK “colder, poorer, in the pocket of dictators”. “Its not taking back control, its energy surrender,” he concluded. Long before the election, he said that “Labour will pass an Energy Independence Act”, which “will break Britain’s dependency on fossil fuel dictators”.