Starmer and Reeves are deliberately trying to make everybody feel even worse about the UK economy, so they can claim the glory when it gets better. In doing so, they’re destroying business and consumer confidence.
As I reported earlier this month, firms are cutting investment as Labour lines up a string of tax hikes and boosts trade union power.
Wealthy business owners are getting out before Reeves launches an all-out attack on private wealth in her Halloween Budget on October 30.
This morning we learned that consumer confidence is falling at the fastest rate in two-and-a-half years, thanks to Starmer and Reeves’ doom-and-gloom act.
The next big shock will land on October 1, when gas and electricity prices will jump by 10%, piling further pressure on pensioners who’ve lost their Winter Fuel Payment.
Which brings us to Ed Miliband.
‘Red’ Ed led the Labour Party to a disastrous political defeat in 2015, but has survived to be appointed Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero.
He’s a man on a mission. Not just any mission but a « A Clean Energy Superpower Mission”, as puts it on his latest cringe-inducing video, which he posted on X (formerly Twitter) on Tuesday.
Miliband doesn’t care who or what he tramples on as he transforms the English countryside into an industrial wasteland of wind turbines, pylons and solar farms.
He’s revealed himself to be a bit of a bully, too, pledging to “take on the blockers, the delayers, the obstructionists” who oppose his plans.
Many of them have good reasons to object, but Miliband doesn’t care. He’s on a mission, remember? A Clean Energy Superpower Mission.
Resistance isn’t just futile. It’s immoral.
His mission isn’t just going to be an aesthetic disaster, it’s going to wreak financial havoc, too.
Starmer has repeatedly promised lower energy bills, but thanks to Miliband, they’re set to rocket instead.
One of Miliband’s first acts was to ban new drilling for oil and gas in the North Sea, in a move that will drive up domestic energy bills and leave us totally exposed to the next energy shock.
He doesn’t seem to care that 200,000 energy sector workers will lose their jobs as a result, according to trade union Unite.
They’re just collateral damage in his Clean Energy Superpower Mission.
Miliband is keen to pile yet more windfall taxes on the nation’s dwindling band of energy producers.
Sheena McGuinness, head of renewables and cleantech at RSM UK, points out that energy windfall tax revenues are already sliding fast as explorers give up. Now they’ll slide faster.
Miliband has also rejected fracking out of hand.
Yet the only reason the West has been able to shrug off Vladimir Putin’s energy threats is that we’re getting cheap oil and gas courtesy of the US shale boom.
Otherwise Russian state producer Gazprom would have us over a proverbial barrel.
US energy costs are half ours. No wonder their economy is booming and ours is stagnating.
Climate change is a serious threat but mothballing UK gas and oil production simply means we import more from abroad, where standards may be lower, the energy dirtier and transport costs higher.
No other country is doing this.
The cost of Miliband’s misguided GB Energy plan will be felt by household for years, but he won’t listen.
He’s already been forced to U-turn on plans to ban petrol cars by 2030. More U-turns will follow.
Miliband’s Clean Energy Superpower Mission is going to end in disaster, and households and taxpayers will be left with the bill.
