While the UK burns, Miliband fiddles with the thermostat
Yesterday, Ed Miliband confirmed that the UK is legally committed to cutting its greenhouse gas emissions by 87 per cent by 2040. The announcement came on the same day that the British Chambers of Commerce warned that unemployment will rise by 400,000 under this Labour government, pushing the jobless rate to its highest level since 2014.
Youth unemployment, already at an 11-year high of 16.2 per cent, is forecast to hit 17.8 per cent by mid-2027. The IMF has the UK growing at 0.3 per cent this year, the worst performance in the G7 by some distance.
One is therefore entitled to ask what planet Miliband is living on.
He is not alone in asking the question. Two days ago, Archie Norman, chairman of Marks and Spencer, wrote in his company’s annual report the UK has "rarely in history" been this anti-growth. Norman is not an ideologue. He is one of the most respected figures in British business. When he warns that high taxes and excessive red tape are smothering businesses and hollowing out town centres, he is speaking from direct experience rather than political conviction.
His M&S colleague Stuart Machin, the chief executive, has separately accused Labour of driving up companies' energy bills by piling on policy costs and green levies, saying it is "just not sustainable for UK businesses". Machin has also called the Chancellor's proposed supermarket price caps "completely preposterous". These are not fringe voices. They are the people running the shops that millions of British people use every week.
The pub trade is saying the same thing. David McDowall, chief executive of Stonegate, the UK’s biggest pub company, wrote publicly this week that soaring youth unemployment rates were "a stark reminder of what happens when government policy actively penalises job creation". His message to the government was blunt: "We don't lack the desire to hire young people; we lack the economic breathing room to do so."
Lord Wolfson of Aspley Guise, who runs Next, said last week that the government had its "foot on the brake" on growth and that Labour’s Employment Rights Act was fuelling a "dramatic fall" in entry-level jobs.
The price of conviction
Into this landscape, Miliband has chosen to announce the Seventh Carbon Budget. The roadmap to his 87 per cent emissions target will require UK households to rip out gas boilers and replace them with heat pumps, abandon petrol and diesel cars, and, in the most telling detail of all, eat less meat and dairy. The Climate Change Committee, which authored the plan, has previously written to Miliband recommending that meat and dairy consumption be cut by up to 50 per cent by 2050. Options for achieving this include taxing meat products, cutting livestock subsidies, and restricting advertising. For a government that came to power promising growth and opportunity, this is a fairly revealing programme.
The energy price cap for a typical household stands at £1,641 until the end of June, after which it rises to £1,862. That July increase reflects the energy shock from the Iran conflict. The government's own figures accept that network and policy costs will form a growing share of bills through to 2030 as grid infrastructure is upgraded to support the transition. Environmental and social policy costs already account for 16 per cent of the typical electricity bill. The net cost to the economy of reaching net zero between 2025 and 2050 is estimated by the OBR at £116 billion.
None of this registers in Miliband's framing, which is essentially that anyone questioning the pace or cost of the transition has their head in the sand about climate change. It is a clever rhetorical move: by collapsing the distinction between accepting the science of climate change and accepting this government's specific policy programme, he can dismiss critics without engaging them. The shadow energy secretary Claire Coutinho was not wrong when she warned that the scale of dietary and behavioural change being demanded risked generating public unrest. That is not a climate-sceptic position. It is a statement of political reality from someone who has read a focus group.
When the ideology is the policy
What makes this especially frustrating is the nature of the government doing it. Lobbying Labour on economic policy is a strange exercise, because you are not simply trying to persuade a group of politicians. You are trying to dislodge an ideology. This is a government whose hostility to the private sector is so deep that it has managed to announce a raft of employment law changes whose consequences are now visible in the jobs data. The British Chambers of Commerce has repeatedly identified labour costs as the main cost pressure for businesses.
The conventional response from regulated industries is to engage more loudly: more lobbying, more press releases, more trade body statements. The problem is that this government is not suffering from a lack of information. It has heard the arguments. It simply does not believe them, or does not believe that the people making them are credible enough to matter. Closing that gap, between what businesses communicate and what this government actually believes, requires something different: voices it cannot dismiss, arguments it has not already categorised, and a methodology built around understanding belief rather than projecting it.
The country needs cheaper energy, a lower tax burden, and a government that treats commerce as a solution rather than a problem. It is not getting any of those things. Instead, it is getting a new carbon budget, a recommendation to eat fewer sausages, and a secretary of state who thinks the critics simply lack the courage to face the future.
The future will come regardless. The question is whether anyone will be able to afford it.
