This week Ed Miliband announced two things. First, the government will try to weaken the link between electricity prices and gas prices — a tacit admission that Net Zero policy has made our power bills unaffordable. Second, in his words, Britain must “double down not back down” on the very policies that caused the problem in the first place.
Only in modern Britain could a minister look at a crisis caused by his own ideology and conclude that the solution is more of the same.
The Marginal Pricing Sleight of Hand
Here is the truth Miliband doesn’t want you to focus on. Gas still sets the wholesale electricity price around 60% of the time, even though gas now provides a shrinking share of generation. Why? Because of the marginal pricing system — the most expensive plant on the grid sets the price for everyone.
Renewables operators sell their cheap wind and solar at the gas-set price and pocket the difference. Households pay the gas price. The renewables lobby gets a windfall. Miliband’s answer is to push wind and solar onto fixed contracts covering a third of the UK’s needs — but he’s not actually breaking the marginal pricing model. He’s just rebranding it.
And while he tinkers at the edges, he’s building more of the system that caused the problem. You cannot insulate British consumers from gas-price shocks while simultaneously closing every gas plant you can find.
The Industrial Cost Is Already Visible
British industry pays among the highest electricity prices in the developed world. Steel-makers, ceramics manufacturers, fertiliser plants, glass-makers — these are the foundations of any serious economy and they are being driven out of Britain by energy costs Miliband refuses to address at source.
The promise of “green jobs” was always a bait-and-switch. The wind turbines are made in China. The solar panels are made in China. The batteries are made in China. China is opening more coal-fired generation every year than Britain has in total. We are de-industrialising ourselves to give them an unbeatable cost advantage, and Miliband calls this a triumph.
The Working-Class Voter Has Worked This Out
You don’t need a degree in energy economics to understand what is happening. People in my constituency in Preston East have watched the price cap rise and fall and rise again. They notice that none of the promised £300 reduction Labour campaigned on has materialised. They notice that the bills they pay are still hundreds of pounds higher than before Labour took office.
Miliband’s response — double down — is a slap in the face to every household struggling with energy costs. Working people are being asked to subsidise an ideological project that benefits no one but a small green-investor class and the Chinese Communist Party.
What Reform UK Would Do
Reform UK would scrap the unilateral 2050 Net Zero target. We would license new North Sea oil and gas. We would pause the closure of efficient gas-fired power stations until we have firm replacement capacity that doesn’t depend on the wind blowing. We would withdraw the subsidies and contracts-for-difference that hand renewables operators a guaranteed profit at consumers’ expense.
And we would treat energy policy as what it actually is: a question of national security, industrial competitiveness, and the cost of living for ordinary families — not as a virtue-signalling exercise for ministers who don’t pay their own electricity bills.