Some say Ed Miliband is mad – but the truth is far more terrifying

It’s a harsh thing to say about anyone, even a politician. Yet there's something unhinged about his net zero crusade. Running the UK energy system on renewables by 2035 always looked wildly ambitious. So what did Miliband do on taking office? Brought the deadline forward to 2030. That’s mad.

There's an awful lot of work to do before then. Plastering the countryside and coastline with wind farms and solar panels is the easy part. They also have to be connected to the grid by armies of pylons, while the grid itself needs a vast and expensive upgrade simply to cope with all that intermittent power.

All of which is, frankly, mad. And it’s already produced mad consequences, such as paying wind farms not to generate electricity because we can’t use it yet. Or driving up our household energy bills at a time when PM Keir Starmer has identified the cost-of-living crisis as the main reason voters hate his government. Mad.

Miliband is also doing something no sane country would consider, blocking all new oil and gas exploration in the North Sea. That would be rational if we didn’t use oil and gas. But we do. We import huge quantities, at enormous cost. Miliband blocked it anyway.

We know why. He wants to save the planet. Fair enough. I think climate change is real too, but the energy transition cannot happen overnight. Or even by 2030.

We still need fossil fuels. Without them, people freeze and industry collapses. Producing them ourselves is cheaper, more secure, and generates lower emissions than importing them from halfway around the world. That seems rational to me. Not to Ed Miliband.

But here’s the terrifying part. Miliband has grasped something about modern politics that almost nobody else in Keir Starmer’s cabinet has.

As Donald Trump demonstrates every time he opens his mouth, today's politics are divisive. You pick your base, choose your battles, and say or do extreme things. Most people will be alienated. But your base will love it.

That’s exactly where Ed Miliband is. Most people who pay attention think he’s off his rocker. Labour activists can't get enough of him.

That’s because he’s doing and saying the things they fantasise about doing if they were in power. The stuff they rant about at North London dinner parties.

Instead of courting the political centre, or worrying about the damage he’s doing to Britain’s industrial base, he’s feeding the left exactly what it wants.

If anyone questions him, or warns that his net zero drive could cost trillions, he blames the right-wing press. The left loathe the right-wing press. It’s their ultimate bogeyman. Miliband knows this. He has them eating out of his hand.

While Starmer U-turns again and again, Ed ploughs on regardless. That gives him immense kudos on the left, even a shot at being PM. I don’t think Labour is quite mad enough to inflict Miliband on the country. He says he doesn’t want the job anyway.

Instead, he’ll be Labour’s kingmaker. Whether Angela Rayner, Wes Streeting or Andy Burnham replaces Starmer will depend, in part, on Miliband.

By stubbornly refusing to heed reason or change course, he’s made himself a power in the Labour Party. Ed Miliband may be mad, but he's not thick.