Miliband in attack on Farage's net zero 'lies'

Ed Miliband today tears into Nigel Farage and the Tories for peddling dangerous "nonsense and lies" by suggesting the UK's net zero target is responsible for destroying Britain's businesses, including its steel industry.

- Toby Helm

Cabinet ministers are determined to fight back against the way Reform UK and the Conservatives have unceremoniously lambasted the climate crisis agenda for what they believe are nakedly political reasons before important local elections next month.

Both Farage and the Tories have blamed the perilous situation at British Steel's Scunthorpe plant on high energy costs, saying renewable energy prices have put the company on the brink.

Reform has also used the crisis to call for the UK to become self-sufficient in oil and gas by drilling more in the North Sea, despite the fact that stocks there are dwindling fast and most of what is produced is exported.

The total abandonment of the broad political consensus for net zero by parties on the right of UK politics and by US president Donald Trump's Republican administration in Washington is causing serious alarm inside the UK government.

Britain's prime minister, Keir Starmer, is expected to "double down" on his Labour government's commitment to a green energy future, and making the UK a clean energy superpower, at an International Energy Agency conference this week in London that will also be attended by pro-fossil-fuel officials from the Trump administration.

In an article for today's Observer, Miliband, the energy secretary, says the argument for the UK delivering clean power by 2030 is the same as it was when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022: the need to free ourselves from dependency on foreign supplies, including from Russia, which can lead to uncontrolled price spikes.