But the vast majority will be chuffed to bits. They’ll think a bad week for the energy secretary is a good one for the country, and I think they’re right. Miliband’s net zero charge has saddled households and businesses with eye-watering costs. Blocking new North Sea oil and gas projects has hit jobs, tax revenues, investment and energy security. Given the summer we’re having, we can’t deny climate change. But we can’t indulge fantasies either. Getting to net zero was never going to be easy, and chucking around tens of billions while chasing impossible deadlines has done the country no favours.
Miliband’s accelerated rush towards a fanciful 2030 deadline meant throwing tens of billions at vast infrastructure schemes and unproven carbon capture tech, while pressing ahead with wind and solar before the grid is ready. Productive farmland and beautiful countryside are being scarred by oversized wind turbines, endless solar farms, pylons and battery storage plants, mostly stamped made in China. Oil city Aberdeen is being ravaged and the UK de-industrialised, and Burnham isn’t prepared to put up with it.
Miliband desperately wants to be made chancellor. That would be a nightmare. Even Donald Trump has been warning against it. Recent briefings suggest Burnham is having second thoughts. And a furious Miliband is spitting feathers at the snub. He helped drive Keir Starmer out of Number 10 and install Burnham. Now it seems like his dream job may go to Shabana Mahmood instead.
If true, and we’ll know more tomorrow, Burnham has made the right call. Miliband is a loose cannon who simply goes his own way. Starmer tried to rein in his wayward energy secretary and was rebuffed. When Rachel Reeves stood up to him over North Sea drilling, he reportedly snubbed her too.
If Burnham handed Miliband the Treasury, he’d run off with it. The new PM would be handing the running of his government to its most ungovernable member from day one. Thankfully, it looks like Burnham has woken up to the threat.
The Treasury, financial markets, trade unions and just about everybody outside North London’s liberal bubble will breathe a sigh of relief. But it leaves Burnham with a problem. Miliband is hugely popular among Labour Party MPs and activists, and he won’t like being stabbed in the back. He’s usually the one doing the stabbing – remember what he did to his brother? And of course Keir Starmer. Now Miliband is the one being skewered. Some will see it as poetic justice.
That’s good news for the UK’s energy policy and economy. If Britain can reindustrialise instead of watching companies shift operations overseas in search of cheaper energy, everybody benefits.
New prime ministers like an early win, and canning Red Ed looks like one of the easiest available. But it could backfire. Labour’s 403 MPs are overwhelmingly on the left and in a constant state of mutiny. When the going gets tough for Burnham, as it inevitably will, Red Ed could become a rallying point.
Burnham has to watch his back. It seems he may try to fob off Miliband with another senior post, perhaps foreign secretary. Let’s hope that keeps him too busy for plotting and scheming. Although I dread to think what our foreign policy will look like.
