Why exactly does Ed Miliband make so many people so angry? At 55, 20 years into his parliamentary career, with rare ministerial experience under both New Labour and Keir Starmer, and a reputation around Westminster and Whitehall as one of politics’ nicer, more knowledgeable characters, he could be a respected figure in a generally inexperienced government. Instead, he’s this unpopular administration’s most controversial member.
“An eco-zealot”, “a net-zero fanatic”, a “nauseating” hypocrite, “a cackling madman”, an “eco-Marxist”, “out of control”, “trashing Britain”, “a recruiting sergeant for the opposition”, the “most dangerous man in Britain” – Miliband provokes rightwing journalists and voters like no other minister. Possibly not since the onslaught in the 1970s on the socialist disruptor Tony Benn, whom Miliband later worked for as a teenager, has a Labour minister been so relentlessly targeted. Even the long-running and complex crisis in Britain’s steel industry has become an opportunity to blame him, despite him being secretary of state for energy security and net zero for fewer than 10 months.
Like Benn, Miliband is also undermined by his own side. Anonymous briefings are constantly given to journalists that he is a political liability and about to be demoted or fired. In January, a typical Labour “colleague” told the Sunday Times: “The only minister who really knows how to work the system and get officials delivering what he wants is Ed Miliband … And Ed is the one minister we don’t want to be a success if we want to win the next election.”
The government has forced Miliband into real or perceived retreats on airport expansion, electric vehicles, the nationalisation of energy companies and the scale of Labour’s green investment. To the disappointment of some environmentalists, he has had to spend much of his ministerial time trying to justify the government’s climate compromises, willingly or otherwise. To critics on all sides, the question is when he will resign – or why he hasn’t already.
Yet neither his divisiveness nor his survival should come as a surprise. His determinedly upbeat 2021 book Go Big: 20 Bold Solutions to Fix Our World includes a quote from Machiavelli: “The reformer has enemies in all those who profit by the old order, and only lukewarm defenders in all those who would profit by the new order.” As any rational climate policy unavoidably focuses more and more on restricting big carbon-emitting interests – motorists, airlines, fossil fuel companies – so the policy’s designers and implementers inevitably become the hated or, more subtly, obstructed removers of commercial and personal freedoms. And unlike most Labour ministers, Miliband appears to enjoy upsetting the established order. His speeches are increasingly combative. In interviews, he challenges the assumptions behind hostile questions.
Because he was an underwhelming Labour leader in what seems a distant era, the relatively calm first half of the 2010s, it’s been forgotten by many voters – but not by some of his enemies – that he was a sporadic troublemaker even then: attacking the Murdoch press over phone hacking, and corporate “predators” for feasting on the British economy. Despite his old “Red Ed” nickname, his politics are hardly revolutionary: no more than centre-left by postwar Labour standards. But unlike with many centrists, his beliefs are both stubbornly held and open to radicalisation, as has happened in recent years as he has perceived capitalism and the climate developing in increasingly catastrophic directions.
Years of being slagged off has also hardened him. He no longer has any illusions that the rightwing media will ever tolerate him. He is often portrayed as alien – a “zealot” – to the supposedly sensible traditions of our politics. Despite the pro-Israel rhetoric now obligatory on the right, this othering still has a hint of the antisemitism that shadowed his leadership, with its endlessly reprinted photo of Labour’s first Jewish leader struggling with a bacon sandwich.
Miliband is also an earnest north Londoner who believes in the state, defeated his more rightwing and media-favoured brother, David, in a leadership contest, and then lost what was widely seen as a winnable general election. Even if he was running a less contentious ministry, which may be his eventual fate, plenty of people would find reasons to dislike him.
Although, strikingly, that dislike does not extend to the Labour membership. A recent survey for the website LabourList found that Miliband was their favourite minister, far ahead of rightwingers such as Wes Streeting and Rachel Reeves, and of Starmer himself. That popularity is probably one reason Miliband hasn’t been sacked. But it also generates tensions, reminding the Labour right that its party purge is not yet complete, and highlighting Starmer’s limited rapport with the members. Anti-Miliband feelings are also generated by his ability to work the Whitehall machine. For all the British right’s disdain for socialist dreamers, what it really dislikes is a lefty who get things done.
Largely driven by Miliband, trying to maximise his impact while he can, Labour has ended the de facto ban on onshore wind turbines, announced a large expansion of solar power, begun legislating to create the state-owned clean power company GB Energy, and stopped granting exploration licences for new North Sea oil and gas fields. Meanwhile, some of his defeats on climate policy may be more apparent than real. The expansion of Heathrow, for example, will have to meet so many environmental conditions that many observers believe it will never happen.
Miliband and Starmer remain quite close. As leader, Miliband cleared the way for him to become an MP. As a minister, Miliband helps him believe he is still leading a progressive government. But those who predict Miliband’s imminent demise point out Starmer’s ruthlessness towards close colleagues when he thinks they have become a problem. In 2021, he removed Miliband’s shadow ministerial responsibility for business. Then, as now, Miliband was winding up powerful people.
Yet the world has changed since then. The climate crisis has worsened faster than expected. Labour has found being back in office harder than it anticipated. Along with Reform UK and the Lib Dems, the Greens are eroding its support. As the failure of his policies to stop the latter process shows, Miliband is hardly a perfect politician. But being angry or disappointed with him is really a displacement activity. It’s much easier to think about the end of Miliband than the end of the world.
Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist
