Ed Miliband is “easily the most dangerous man who has ever come within touching distance of becoming our Prime Minister,” commentator Christopher Booker has said.
Writing about Miliband’s record as Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change from 2008 to 2010, Booker says that Miliband’s Climate Change Act, which the current government has not repealed, will by £734bn in total by 2050, or £18bn a year.
Recent EU estimates suggest the figure could even be as high as £1.3 trillion, almost equivalent to the entire UK national debt, or more than £50,000 per household.
The Act commits the UK to cutting carbon emissions by 80 per cent within 35 years to a level not seen since the start of the industrial revolution.
The original text committed Britain to reduce it by only 60 per cent, but at Miliband’s behest, this was increased to 80 at the last minute, following pressure from green lobby groups. According to his department’s own figures, this nearly doubled its cost.
At the moment, 70 per cent of the UK’s energy comes from fossil fuels, and in this age of computer technology, it is essential to the functioning of our economy and our daily lives. Yet the Climate Change Act contains little information on how the UK will continue to generate its electricity while reducing CO2 emissions by such a drastic amount.
Fossil fuel-powered plants will only be allowed to survive if they are fitted with “carbon capture and storage” which extracts their carbon emissions to be buried under the sea. At the moment the technology is very expensive and has not even been shown to be viable. It would likely treble the cost of energy.
Yet Miliband has pledged to use government power to freeze fuel prices, a promise that knocked £3bn off the value of Britain’s big energy companies when he made it in 2013.
While he was Energy and Climate Change Secretary, Miliband also piled on ‘Green Taxes’ and subsidised the building of expensive new wind farms (whose efficacy has not been proven), something which added hundreds of pounds a year to energy bills.
Miliband was so lost in a “green fantasy world that his only concern was the ‘climate change’ part of his job title.” The energy part – the part that keeps the lights on and electricity bills low – was of secondary importance.
Booker concludes: “It is not only his stupidity over the Climate Change Act which made him our ‘most expensive politician’ in history. Worse still, his lack of judgment also marks him out as easily the most dangerous man who has ever come within touching distance of becoming our Prime Minister.”
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