20 June 2025

Ed Miliband keeps winning

Following months of speculation that his plans for Clean Power 2030 could get cut, the Energy Secretary has proved his detractors wrong.

By Megan Kenyon

It’s been a cheery couple of weeks for Ed Miliband. Despite a raft of negative briefings in the weeks prior to the Spending Review, Miliband’s Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) ended up being one of Rachel Reeves’ biggest winners.

Alongside the cancellation of a previously trailed cut to the warm homes plan, DESNZ received a 16 per cent increase in spending power (more than any other department). Now, following a period of internal wrangling with the No 10 and the Treasury, the former Labour leader has announced the extension of the warm homes discount, a policy that offers a £150 energy-bill discount to those on low incomes. Insiders tell me it is something the Energy Secretary has been working on behind the scenes for months.

Energy bills – and the government’s pledge to cut them by £300 before the end of the parliament – will be a key metric of Labour’s success at the next election. Frustration over the slow pace of reduction, alongside fury over the winter fuel payment cut, were big issues on the doorstep during the locals (which wasn’t a good night for Labour).

In the wake of voting, one insider close to Miliband pointed to the warm homes discount – which was first introduced in 2011 – and questioned why the government did not make more of it following the decision to cut winter fuel. It is, after all, a means-tested benefit intended to support not just elderly people, but millions of households on low incomes.

The extension announced on Thursday will see a further 2.7 million households eligible to receive this benefit; more than 6 million households in total will be able to access the discount. It will be paid for via an agreement the government has made with the energy regulator, Ofgem. Currently, energy bills include the socialised costs of energy companies’ unpaid debts; the government has done a deal to reduce the overall debt burden on energy companies. This accompanies the recent cut to the energy price cap, which comes into effect in July, meaning a double hit to energy bills.

All of this suggests that, despite speculation Keir Starmer is about to make an about-turn on support for net zero, the Prime Minister is firmly staying the course. Not only has Miliband’s funding been bolstered, but his department has been responsible for some of the government’s most recent positive news: almost 100,000 new jobs at Sizewell C, solar panels for newbuild homes, schools and hospitals, and now the extension of the warm homes discount. And Starmer has made it clear that, in directly taking on Nigel Farage, he won’t look to ape the Reform UK’s net zero scepticism but will seek to prove how the green transition can help low-income, marginalised communities, as well as slashing the UK’s carbon emissions.

That Starmer is staying close to Miliband is unsurprising. The PM has, after all, always been environmentally minded (he is a pescatarian, did you know?). Perhaps his most famous case as a human rights lawyer was representing two Greenpeace activists against McDonald’s in the 1997 McLibel trial. Starmer, who’s former Kentish Town home is a short walk from Miliband’s in Dartmouth Park, was also encouraged to run to be an MP in 2015 by his predecessor as Labour leader. The pair have a shared political history; it’s easy to speculate that Starmer feels some loyalty there.

Connections aside, it’s clear Starmer sees the electoral benefit of his Energy Secretary’s clean-power drive, particularly after the disastrous winter fuel payment saga and the government’s subsequent U-turn. Reducing the UK’s reliance on imported natural gas and other fossil fuels will lead to lower energy bills; a result on which Starmer’s premiership will be heavily judged (and to some extent, already is). And in this new turbulent international climate the arguments for energy security remain; Miliband was the first to make them. After months of being underestimated by his detractors the Energy Secretary and his agenda are safe, for the time being. It now rests on his delivery.