Trump’s return is a disaster for Ed Miliband – his Net Zero dreams may soon lie in tatters

The President-Elect has made no secret of his disdain for this “radical Left” agenda

The weather in Azerbaijan is set fair for next week as Ed Miliband jets in to talk climate change. On day one of COP29, intermittent sunshine is expected, with only an 8 per cent chance of rain. Nonetheless, the Energy and Climate Change Secretary will need to pack his jumper, for there are chill winds blowing his way.
Indeed, following Donald Trump’s sensational election victory, the whole ten day shindig is likely to be enveloped in gloom. In a shattering blow to Net Zero crusaders, the most powerful man on the planet now appears to think climate change is a hoax.
The UK is already experiencing what the Germans call “dunkelflaute” – a series of murky days without wind or sunshine. Such conditions are always bad news for Miliband’s renewable energy push, as his beloved turbines and solar panels struggle to generate kilowatts. 
These dismal conditions will pass. What will not go away is the growing political threat to this Government’s entire environmental agenda.
Make no mistake – the looming return of Trump to the White House has just planted a bomb under Labour’s Net Zero obsession. It is now far more politically perilous. For just as Miliband and his carbon emission-fixated ministerial colleagues ratchet up their campaign to achieve “clean power” by 2030, a Trump-led America will be pulling in the opposite direction.
Sure, Trump’s new efficiency Tsar Elon Musk, whose net worth is linked to Net Zero, may temper the new President’s notoriously hard-line views. Meanwhile Labour eco-zealots like Miliband will seek to depict the new occupant of the White House as both delusional and irresponsible about rising temperatures. 
They have all bet the house on this particular agenda, allowing all manner of green enterprises to syphon billions from the public purse. They are all far too invested in their great emission reduction programme to back down.
However, as British voters finally begin to appreciate what is being sacrificed, a growing number seem likely to be drawn to what Trump has to say. 
If millions start questioning the point in abandoning fossil fuels and turning our beautiful countryside into a latticework of new cables and pylons and giant solar panel farms when America is doing the reverse, Miliband and his party face political catastrophe.
To date, Net Zero has not featured near the top of British voters’ concerns, dominated as they are by the cost of living and the state of the NHS. The same types who smeared Brexit supporters as xenophobes and racists have been extremely effective at shutting down debate. 
They demean anyone who dares question whether we are truly heading for “global boiling”. Supported by an army of pseudo scientists and far too many real ones, these eco-zealots seem to take great pleasure in making ordinary people feel stupid for their instinctive sense that something is not right with all the apocalyptic claims. 
There is of course a world of difference between denying the fact that weather patterns are changing and questioning the policy response, but why not call all dissenters flat-earthers and freaks?
In America, Trump has faced down the shrieking hysterics, and his messaging about climate change could not be simpler. In short, he thinks it is a gigantic scam and considers “decisively defeating” the agenda one of his most urgent tasks.
He believes what he calls “radical Left fear-mongering” about the future of the planet is not only scaring American youth, but destroying the economy, weakening society and “eviscerating the middle classes.”. In this country it is the least well-off who are paying the heaviest price for all the rising bills and burdens during the transition to Miliband’s carbon neutral Neverland.
Mocking the shift in terminology from global warming (which “wasn’t working out too well, because a lot of places were extremely cool”) to climate change (“you can’t miss with that; it can go up or down; it can go 15 different directions”) Trump has called on conservative leaders, think tanks and intellectuals around the world to call out the lunacy.
“These people have got a lot of problems,” the President-Elect has said.
Well yes they do – few more so than Miliband and Starmer, if Trump’s message begins to reverberate here. For while Miliband destroys British steel and cancels North Sea oil and gas projects, costing tens of thousands of jobs, the world’s two biggest carbon emitters – America and China – will be ramping up production. 
As the headlong rush to reach Net Zero makes everyday life in the UK ever more costly and complicated, the argument that this is the wrong response to undeniable changes in weather patterns will truly begin to resonate.
Luckily for Miliband and his party, voters in this country have been slow to make the connection between high consumer prices and the Net Zero agenda – not least because we do not have many very influential politicians or business leaders making the case. That will almost certainly change.
When housebuilding stalls under the weight of never-ending climate-related rules and regulations; when the rental market seizes up because of similar burdens; when every British householder faces the highest electricity prices of any developed country to pay for ruinous green subsidies; when visible climate change penalties are attached to more basic goods and services, the Net Zero agenda will become a very real consideration at the ballot box.
Miliband and his fellow believers keep promising that more renewables will reduce electricity bills – but persistently refuse to say when. In a sign of the Energy Secretary’s diminishing confidence in his own pledge, he appears to have dropped the £300 annual bill reduction he promised at the general election. 
Alarmingly, a report published last week by the national grid operator NESO, which Milband controls, warned that taxpayers will need to spend an additional £40 billion per year to get to clean energy by 2030. That is twice the size of Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ infamous black hole and equivalent to £1,300 per household a year. 
Like all cult leaders, Miliband is undeterred.
Far too late, Tories are realising their mistake in going along with it all. After 14 years of backing Net Zero, they cannot credibly pivot to “drill baby drill”. Nobody likes admitting they have made a colossal mistake. But there are tentative signs that new party leader Kemi Badenoch may begin to pull away. 
Back in 2022, she described the Net Zero target as “unilateral economic disarmament,” questioning the pace. If she really has doubts, her problem will be that many in her own party remain wedded to the agenda.
For now, that leaves Nigel Farage: Trump’s closest UK political ally. His party has long labelled Net Zero ‘Net Stupid.’ Stand by for Farage to fire this up the political agenda. When Miliband returns from Baku, he better start preparing for storms.