Last week a trade union general secretary almost called for the replacement of a cabinet minister. You might have missed it. The interview was on the day of the local elections and attention soon moved to two familiar sights: Nigel Farage toasting his victories and the Labour Party feuding over its defeats.
Since becoming Unite’s general secretary, Sharon Graham has mostly eschewed the power plays that defined her predecessor Len McCluskey (who treated shadow cabinet ministers as chess pieces to be moved around). But here is what she told Times Radio about the job of Energy Secretary: “Somebody needs to be in that post that believes in Britain, believes in these skills, believes in the national security of the county”.
The seeming implication was that this person is not Ed Miliband – who Graham has accused of having “no plan” to stop oil and gas workers becoming “the miners of net zero” (Unite declined to comment when I asked whether Graham was indeed calling for his replacement).
On Tuesday I detailed the pincer movement against Rachel Reeves – the soft left, Blue Labour and the Red Wall Group have all targeted the Chancellor’s economic approach. But Miliband, as a close friend notes, faces a hostile coalition of his own: “the trade unions, Tony Blair and the right-wing press” (a triumvirate aligned on little else).
Confronted by this, Miliband’s allies draw solace from two sources: the voters and the Prime Minister. In recent weeks, Labour MPs have been assailed – verbally and electorally – by the former. As a backbencher puts it to me: “One of the consequences to the heavy-handed approach to getting MPs out campaigning is that we’ve been outside the bubble and talking to lots of very, very angry and pissed-off voters”.
Back in Westminster, MPs recount that one issue dominated above all: the winter fuel payment cuts (a policy which Miliband, an adviser to Gordon Brown when he introduced the benefit, privately warned against). Demands for its reversal are intermingled with others – a more interventionist industrial strategy and tougher controls on immigration (the government will have more to say on both of those soon). But few MPs cite net zero as a culprit for Labour’s descent.
That’s unsurprising: polling by YouGov for Persuasion UK has found that the issue does not make the top 12 “pull factors” for Labour to Reform voters. Backing for net zero, it suggests, helps Labour retain the backing of Green-curious supporters without alienating Reform-curious ones (overall, the public back net zero by a two-to-one margin).
Miliband’s team aim to use the next few months to further solidify this coalition of support. They believe Reform’s opposition to renewable energy projects in its new fiefdoms offers a potent dividing line on growth and jobs. They are also encouraged by projections that energy bills will fall by £166 (or 9 per cent) in July and are pushing for nuclear power investment to be central to Reeves’ Spending Review in June.
Yet speculation that the government will discard net zero or Miliband (or both) has rarely ceased. No 10 has spent this year demolishing liberal-left taboos: reducing the foreign aid budget by 40 per cent, announcing the largest welfare cuts since George Osborne and backing a third runway at Heathrow (a policy privately resisted by Miliband). Plenty asked whether net zero would join this ensemble either before or after the elections.
But provided with countless opportunities to recalibrate, Keir Starmer has instead doubled down. Renewable energy, he declared in a speech last month, is “in the DNA of my government”, noting that “the UK’s net zero sectors are growing three times faster than the economy as a whole”.
When Blair appeared to argue that Miliband’s net zero strategy was “doomed to fail”, some wondered whether he was outriding for No 10 (the former prime minister and Starmer speak regularly). But it was Downing Street that forced Blair to row back as it reaffirmed its support for the 2050 target (Miliband’s allies describe the intervention as an “own goal”). Downing Street refused to guarantee that Miliband would remain in post for the remainder of this parliament – the assurance it has offered Reeves and David Lammy – but it did declare that he was doing a “fantastic job”. Is this enough?
Miliband’s supporters like to compare him to Michael Gove – a man who entered government with a plan and has bent Whitehall to his will (Gove has returned the compliment by naming Miliband, along with Yvette Cooper, as Labour’s most effective administrator).
But there was, as a government source recently reminded me, a twist to this tale. Though Gove’s school reforms are now lauded – No 10’s new education adviser, Oli de Botton, co-founded a free school – the Education Secretary was ruthlessly demoted to chief whip in 2014. Strategist Lynton Crosby – whose influence then was as great as Morgan McSweeney’s is now – deemed Gove one of the “barnacles” that had to be scraped off the boat as the Tories prepared for re-election. Cameron laid down his friend for his political life.
Faced with a no less fervent campaign against his own friend (Miliband), will Starmer do the same? The evidence, detailed above, suggests not but the Prime Minister has shown his capacity for night-and-day changes before (recall the apparent passion with which he publicly defended Miliband’s £28bn green investment pledge before discarding it). We should know the answer before the summer – and it will tell us much about this government’s future direction.
This piece first appeared in the Morning Call newsletter; receive it every morning by subscribing on Substack here
[See also: The warning of VE Day]
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