Why has Labour briefed against Ed Miliband – is it his success and popularity?

‘Miliband has been the most successful minister under the Starmer administration,’ says a climate thinktank. Photograph: Carl Court/Getty Images View image in fullscreen ‘Miliband has been the most successful minister under the Starmer administration,’ says a climate thinktank. Photograph: Carl Court/Getty Images Analysis Why has Labour briefed against Ed Miliband – is it his success and popularity? Fiona Harvey Environment editor Tories, Reform, fossil fuel industry and some in his party lined up against net zero agenda as energy secretary “Whenever the Labour party feels a bit sad,” according to one close observer of the current government, speaking some months ago, “they wheel out Ed Miliband to talk about rooftop solar .” It might not have been literally true, but it often felt during Keir Starmer’s premiership as if energy secretary Miliband brought the sun. Unfailingly upbeat, with a simple message that was understandable to voters, he had a clear mission – to decarbonise the UK’s power sector by 2030 – that was seen to be progressing fast. While the Treasury struggled with feeble growth and political gaffes such as the winter fuel payments, the NHS was disrupted by doctors’ strikes, and education laboured under dilapidated schools and discouraged teachers, Miliband’s department seemed to get stuff done at an unusual rate. “His detractors won’t like to admit it, but Miliband has been the most successful minister under the Starmer administration,” says Ed Matthew, the UK director at the E3G thinktank. “Perhaps that is why they have attacked him so viciously .” Rightwing media publications have published frequent editorials attacking Miliband , labelling him a “net-zero zealot” with a “messianic” devotion to climate action. Even as three intense heatwaves struck this summer and firefighters battled wildfires across the country, the calls for more drilling for the fossil fuels that are supercharging extreme weather got louder. The fossil fuel industry, along with the Conservatives, Reform UK and sections of the Labour party, has been lobbying Andy Burnham , the new prime minister, for the Jackdaw gasfield, east of Aberdeen, and Rosebank, an oilfield west of Shetland, to be given the go-ahead. Media reports suggested Burnham was preparing to announce new drilling in the North Sea shortly after entering No 10. View image in fullscreen Ed Miliband, seen here in 2009 at the Little Cheyne Court windfarm in Kent, was also energy secretary under Gordon Brown. Photograph: Graeme Robertson/The Guardian Miliband may be personally disappointed if Burnham does this, having previously described Rosebank as “climate vandalism”. Miliband was also behind the push to have no new licences as a manifesto commitment. But giving the go-ahead to Jackdaw or Rosebank would not technically breach the manifesto ban, which left a loophole for the issue of licences that were already within the planning system. For some months, it has been clear that some such compromise