Milipede is entering the realm of Alice in Wonderland

Energy Secretary puts on his cool act, but hasn’t a real clue about how to ‘decarbonise’ the grid by 2030

I’m beginning to think that Ed Miliband might have been created as part of some sort of medieval alchemy test to distil the essence of purest cringe.
Today he was tasked with the second reading of the Great British Energy Bill – itself named from the Bake Off school of constitutional dignity – and did so with all the heft of a stand-in geography teacher trying to get the kids “down with” igneous rocks during a rainy period 7.
“Get this,” he lisped at the House of Commons, “the City of Munich owns more of our offshore wind than we do.”
Wow, Daddio, get you! Even if it was delivered with the unique Milibean charm that made him so electable in 2015, this was all absolutely standard Starmerist bilge.
“Fourteen years of [insert synonym for horror here]” the Milipede repeated again and again, each time delivering the words as if they were a hoick of phlegm he wanted to expel from his doubtless heavily congested nasal canal.
Great British Energy wasn’t just the answer to our energy woes, it was also wildly popular with the general public.
“I have a free idea for the not very Famous Five still left in the Tory leadership race,” he snarked. “Back an idea that voters support!” An amorphous vision is one thing, but what happens when the bill arrives?
For all his insistence that this was the best thing since sliced Ed, Miliband’s trademark policy is already on the rocks.
Last week he wrote a dribbling incoherent letter to the National Grid, essentially admitting that he had no real clue about how to “decarbonise” the grid by 2030.
An incoherent letter for an incoherent policy: he might as well have sent them a guide to Apophatic Theology in Swahili.
The Milipede has clearly been smoking whatever it was the Caterpillar had in his hookah: the more we learn about Great British Energy the clearer it becomes that we are entering the realm of policy-making by Lewis Carroll.
Unfortunately for Ed, shadow energy secretary Claire Coutinho was on hand to provide an accomplished demolition job.
She reminded the Commons of his promise to save consumers £300 a year on their bills and various other impossible things to believe before breakfast. Coutinho mostly stuck to the lack of detail – a trickier complaint for a “Government of Grown-Ups” (™) to fend off. “This bill is four pages long. There’s barely anything in it.”
She feared the handing over of absolute authority, and a multibillion-pound budget, to a man with little experience of investment – or indeed, anything beyond Westminster.
Ed’s CV was allowed to speak for itself. “His only period in the private sector was as a researcher at Channel 4,” she crowed. (“That’s very poor”, harrumphed Ed.)
Determined to continue his supply teacher impression, Miliband flew off the handle whenever someone requested the most basic clarification.
Wera Hobhouse politely asked about private sector investment potentially being crowded out by GBE. Miliband’s eyes bulged dangerously.
Poor Wera was accused of being a “slow learner”, an “Orange Book Lib Dem” and a free-market ideologue – all in the space of about 30 seconds.
The Energy Secretary joins the ranks of his Cabinet colleagues who appear to be allergic to challenge. “We’re in power and questions will not be tolerated”’ is the general mantra.
He may only have been an intern at Channel 4 but it’s clear he’s a valedictorian from the Keir Starmer School of Dishing it Out but not Taking It.