[https://www.dailymail.co.uk/columnists/article-15471469/ANDREW-NEIL-Ed-Miliband-energy-policy-madness.html?ico=authors_pagination_desktop]

Neil’s central charge is devastating: Miliband’s determination to decarbonise Britain’s electricity grid by 2030—regardless of cost, reliability, or industrial consequence—represents policy-making untethered from reality. The numbers are brutal. According to official government data, UK industrial electricity prices for large users now exceed 25 pence per kilowatt-hour including taxes—some 125 percent above the EU-14 median. Manufacturing’s share of GDP has fallen to an all-time low of 9 percent. The Green Party’s energy prescriptions have been adopted wholesale by a Labour government that once understood that working people need affordable energy and stable employment.

But Neil identifies something more troubling than mere policy error: deliberate acceleration. Miliband’s “wrecking ball has speeded up decline.” This isn’t a government cautiously navigating an energy transition; it’s ideological fervour overriding even basic political self-preservation. When a minister actively hastens his nation’s deindustrialisation, we’ve moved from incompetence to something approaching sabotage.

The implications extend far beyond Dover.

The Manufactured Consensus

Neil exposes the ecosystem sustaining this madness: a Net Zero lobby with media allies—the BBC prominent among them—creating manufactured consensus that suppresses dissent. Question the timeline, and you’re a “denier.” Raise cost concerns, and you’re an enemy of the planet. This isn’t debate; it’s enforcement.

This consensus-manufacturing machinery exports globally. ESG frameworks pressure Gulf sovereign wealth funds. Development bank conditionality demands “climate alignment” from emerging economies. Climate finance mechanisms reward compliance with Western timelines regardless of local conditions. The Miliband doctrine isn’t confined to Britain—it’s the template being imposed worldwide.

Labour MPs, Neil observes, “have no idea what they are talking about.” An entire political class has been captured by an ideology it barely understands, parroting talking points about “green jobs” and “cheap renewables” while factories close and bills soar. This parliamentary ignorance has disturbing parallels across the MENA region and Global South, where technocrats sometimes defer to Western consultants pushing solutions designed for economies entirely unlike their own.

Even Tony Blair—hardly a climate sceptic—has broken ranks. His institute recently warned that Miliband’s Clean Power 2030 policy is “destroying industry” and “damaging households,” cautioning that such policies risk pushing voters “towards populists.” When the architect of New Labour publicly rebukes the current Energy Secretary, something has gone profoundly wrong.

The Wind Power Illusion

Neil’s most devastating observation deserves emphasis: “There’s nothing homegrown about wind power. Just about all we do in Britain is erect the turbines.”

Consider what this means. Britain—once the world’s manufacturing superpower—has reduced itself to assembling components designed elsewhere, manufactured elsewhere, with technology controlled elsewhere. China dominates the global wind supply chain, providing 70-80 percent of core components and refining almost 100 percent of the critical minerals required for turbine production. The top turbine manufacturers are Danish (Vestas), Spanish-German (Siemens Gamesa), and increasingly Chinese (Goldwind, Mingyang, Envision). Britain has surrendered industrial sovereignty in pursuit of environmental virtue, and the “green jobs” promised have materialised largely in Shenzhen and Copenhagen, not Sheffield and Sunderland.

Chinese wind turbine manufacturers now offer prices at least 30 percent below European competitors, backed by state subsidies and financing terms Western firms cannot match—including deferred payments of up to three years. As Giles Dickson, CEO of WindEurope, observed: “You can’t do that without an unfair public subsidy.”

This exposes a critical vulnerability that Gulf states and emerging economies should study carefully. Energy transitions that don’t control supply chains merely substitute one dependency for another. Trading reliance on domestic coal for reliance on Chinese solar panels and turbines isn’t energy security—it’s energy subjugation with better public relations.

For Gulf states considering renewable manufacturing investments, the lesson is instructive: own the supply chain or remain dependent. Saudi Arabia’s investments in domestic solar panel production and the UAE’s nuclear programme represent precisely the strategic thinking Britain has abandoned. These nations understand that energy sovereignty requires industrial capability, not just installed capacity.

The Gulf Paradox

For the GCC states, Miliband’s Britain offers both opportunity and warning. Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar are investing heavily in renewable capacity while maintaining hydrocarbon exports—a pragmatic both-and approach that contrasts sharply with Britain’s either-or fundamentalism. The Kingdom’s Vision 2030 explicitly treats renewables as complementary to oil and gas revenues, not a replacement demanding immediate fossil fuel elimination.

Britain’s self-inflicted industrial decline creates openings. Energy-intensive industries fleeing British shores need somewhere to go. The Gulf’s combination of cheap energy, improving regulatory frameworks, and strategic location makes it an obvious destination. When SABIC or Emirates Steel can produce aluminium or steel at a fraction of British energy costs, supply chains restructure accordingly.

The numbers tell the story. British industrial electricity prices for large users now reach 22-25 pence per kilowatt-hour. Saudi industrial rates hover around 5-7 US cents (approximately 4-6 pence). For energy-intensive manufacturing—aluminium smelting, steel production, petrochemicals, data centres—this differential is existential. No amount of workforce retraining or industrial strategy can compensate for electricity costs four to five times your competitors’.

Yet the warning is equally clear: ideology-driven energy transitions destroy wealth. The Gulf states would do well to resist pressure from international institutions and climate activists demanding accelerated decarbonisation timelines that ignore economic fundamentals. The same consultants who advised Britain’s energy transition are now advising Gulf governments. Their track record speaks for itself.

India’s Strategic Calculus

For India—navigating between Western climate demands and developmental imperatives—Britain’s experience validates Modi’s insistence on “common but differentiated responsibilities.” India cannot and should not accept Net Zero timelines that condemn hundreds of millions to energy poverty.

The manufactured consensus Neil describes operates powerfully against India. International climate negotiations, Western media, and multilateral institutions all pressure New Delhi to accelerate coal phase-out regardless of consequences for Indian industry and Indian households. Britain’s example demonstrates where such pressure leads: deindustrialisation, energy insecurity, and strategic vulnerability.

The IMEC corridor, linking India through the Gulf to Europe, was premised partly on energy trade and manufacturing connectivity. But if European markets progressively price themselves out of global manufacturing through punitive energy costs, the corridor’s economic logic shifts. India’s relationships with Gulf energy producers become more, not less, important as Europe’s self-imposed decline accelerates.

India’s energy strategy—coal expansion alongside aggressive renewable deployment—reflects hard-headed realism. Dispatchable baseload power enables industrialisation. Renewables supplement but cannot yet replace. This isn’t climate denial; it’s development economics. Britain forgot this; India cannot afford to.

The Broader Architecture of Decline

Neil identifies something profound about Miliband’s political psychology: he represents a species that believes repetition creates truth. Tell people wind power is cheap often enough, and they’ll believe it—even as their bills double. Insist the transition will create jobs, and ignore the factories closing. Promise energy security while dismantling dispatchable generation.

This isn’t governance; it’s faith-based policy-making. And faith-based policy-making in energy markets produces blackouts, deindustrialisation, and strategic vulnerability.

The architecture sustaining this delusion includes:

Media capture: The BBC and mainstream outlets amplify Net Zero messaging while marginalising critics. Neil’s column appears in the Daily Mail precisely because few other platforms would publish such direct challenge to orthodoxy.

Institutional capture: From the Climate Change Committee to the Treasury, British institutions have been staffed with true believers who treat Net Zero not as policy but as moral imperative beyond question.

Financial capture: ESG mandates redirect capital away from reliable energy toward intermittent renewables, regardless of grid stability or industrial consequence. Pension funds divest from hydrocarbons while investing in wind farms that may never deliver promised returns.

Educational capture: A generation has been taught that climate change is existential and that any energy source involving combustion is morally tainted. This ideological formation precedes economic reasoning.

This architecture is being replicated globally. Gulf sovereign wealth funds face ESG pressure. Indian companies seeking Western investment must demonstrate “climate commitment.” African nations are told gas development is incompatible with climate finance. The Miliband doctrine isn’t British eccentricity—it’s the leading edge of a global campaign.

Strategic Implications for MENA

For the Middle East and North Africa specifically, several implications follow:

First, hydrocarbon producers should accelerate domestic industrial development while Western markets remain accessible. The window during which European consumers will pay premium prices for Gulf petrochemicals and refined products may be shorter than assumed—not because Europe will find alternatives, but because Europe’s industrial base may simply collapse.

Second, energy-intensive manufacturing represents a strategic opportunity. As Britain and Europe drive out industry through energy costs, that capacity must relocate. Gulf states with cheap energy, improving infrastructure, and strategic location should actively court fleeing European manufacturers.

Third, resist the consultants. The same firms that designed Britain’s energy transition are selling their services across the Gulf. Their models assume conditions that don’t apply—temperate climates, existing grid infrastructure, wealthy populations able to absorb higher costs. Advice appropriate for Denmark is dangerous for Dubai.

Fourth, maintain dispatchable generation. The Gulf’s advantage in solar is real, but grids require reliability. Gas-fired backup, battery storage, and potentially nuclear baseload should accompany renewable expansion. Britain’s mistake was treating intermittent renewables as replacement for dispatchable power rather than supplement.

Fifth, develop domestic supply chains. If the energy transition is coming regardless, control its components. Saudi investments in solar manufacturing, UAE nuclear expertise, and Qatari LNG infrastructure represent strategic positioning. Britain outsourced its transition; the Gulf should not.