136. Ed Miliband: Farage, Starmer and The Fight for Net Zero (Part 2)

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1:49Welcome to The Rest of This Politics Leading with me, Rory Stewart. And me, Alistair Campbell. And we're with Ed Miliband for part two. We covered his early life and his early career and his leadership of the Labour Party last week. And we're now going to move on from that awful defeat in 2015. How did you get over that? I say we're going to move on. It's still a work in progress. Is it a work in progress, is it? Look, it's hard. No, I think I'm over it. Are you over it? Yeah, I am. Yeah, I am. But it's taken a long time. It's 10 years. Yeah. Look, it's incredibly hard. I think I said last week that it looked right up to the end like I might win.

2:28So I wasn't fully prepared for it. And I think nothing can fully prepare you for the sort of transition from relevance to irrelevance. You go from thinking every move you make, every sandwich you eat, every breath you take is analysed and nobody gives a hoot what you do. I'm asking this question in a way unfairly because I sort of know the answer. but did you struggle mentally, psychologically? Yeah, definitely. What's interesting is what happens in these moments of adversity tells you a lot about yourself. So I remember I did one last duty as leader of the opposition on the Friday. It was a wartime anniversary, got home, special protection disappears back on my own.

3:15And I remember at that moment onwards, I was like, there's no way I'm giving up being an MP. I'm carrying on. Just because I'm not the leader of the Labour Party doesn't mean I can't have influence, can't have ideas. Never a doubt. Never a doubt. It wavered a bit over the coming of the following months, or maybe it's going to do something else. But fundamentally, at my core, I was like, I'm 45 years old. I've still got something to contribute. And it partly goes to my view about politics and what changes politics. Of course, leaders change, countries change worlds. but movements also do and ideas do and you know i wasn't there to be just you know i felt i was there for my ideas not just for the for the position and i still had my ideas what made it so painful what made it so mentally difficult i suppose i felt like everything had been leading up to this moment for at least five years and possibly more subconsciously it'd been a massive strain on my family my life you'd been through the absolute rinser you know and you sort of absolutely career bang into a brick wall of defeat and then you're like well what what do i do now now i had my role as a backbench mp in donkestown it's important but it was like well you know you've gone from this every inch of your day managed so clear what your objective is and purpose you know purpose is what's so important to us as human beings and in some sense i'd lost my purpose and i suppose i didn't realize on day one day two how hard it was going to be i think to sort of find a way through find a way forward did you have any inkling when you made that decision i remember we spoke on the day and i think i sort of said i understand why you're doing it but maybe isn't it worth just waiting to see the party settle down a bit did you have any sense that Jeremy Corbyn might become the next leader?

5:09No, I don't think he was even a candidate at the time. What do you think that said? And how do you relate that to what you said in the first episode about your own self of maybe not having been bold enough? Do you think he was capitalising on... Yes. I think the question of that leadership contest partly became, do you want a more left-wing version of Ed or do you want a more centrist version of Ed? And the party chose the former. And did you ever think about serving on the front bench under Jeremy Corbyn? Did that conversation ever arise? I got asked and I thought, no. And really, I saw Haig actually after I lost in 2015 because I thought he was a sort of useful counsellor.

5:52He sort of said, carry on being the person you are because you'll find that people's attitude to you transforms. They'll say, where was that person before? And you'll think, you know, he had three lessons, three pieces of advice. second piece of advice make sure the next thing you do is a success uh and thirdly only go back into the shadow cabinet when you feel really ready and you think this is a person who's gonna win and i really want to be sort of thing and i think to be honest i don't think whoever had been the leader i would have served in that period i felt i needed some time just away from it all podcasting podcasting i've only seen this in the kind of smallest sense but the kind of mini version of my life was running for leadership against Boris Johnson and losing to him and feeling that my whole vision of Britain and Brexit had been screwed up.

6:39My whole vision party had been screwed up. And it felt like a very kind of personal rejection of me, my ideas, my values. Did you feel that or not in losing an election? Yeah, it clearly was a rejection of me personally, as well as my ideas. I think it's so interesting this. It says something about me as a person, I'm quite an anxious person, but I tend to be anxious about the things that might happen rather than when they do happen. The defeat was really painful, but my issue was more, well, what the hell do I do now? I also had this experience. I'd be sort of on the street a couple of months afterwards, and I met a person on the street, and they were like, I'm so sorry.

7:18And they started weeping on the street. And they were like, you know, when I saw that exit poll, I was just devastated. I end up sort of hugging them and saying, oh, they're there. It's okay. And I was thinking to myself, oh, God, this is the wrong way around. But, you know, I think it was more what am I going to do? I had an interesting conversation with your brother, David. So when I left politics and I took over an American charity, he said to me, the key question where you have to ask yourself is, not what are you doing in this job, but what's next? What comes after that job? What does that then lead to?

7:48And I wonder whether you don't both share that and where that comes from, that sort of strange... I mean, I hadn't thought about it until now, but maybe a bit comes from our parents. Also, you know, bloody hell. I mean, losing an election is really bad and personally painful, but it's like nothing compared to what my parents went through. We talked in episode one about Ruth First and Joe Slovo, and I met one of their kids the other day, just on the street, with their children. And, you know, I think to myself, God, you know, I think politics is hard. ruth was murdered and joe was fighting apartheid and saw his wife murdered i mean you know okay it's just too banal to say let's just get some perspective but i mean look i think in a way maybe one of the things that the upbringing i had and david too taught us the sense of sort of resilience really and was william haig right in his three pieces of advice i think he was actually uncannily right the other thing is we didn't i didn't sort of reflect on this in episode one but i said i should have been bolder in episode one and that's true i also think i was at the the kind of crossover transition from 1990s on message i'm not slaying off new labor here but new labor politics to the the the yearning for much more authentic politics and what i found after the election i remember i did a tweet saying uh just going down hoban tube and a man shouted oh my god there's nick clegg uh and i wrote tweeted not exactly and then all these people suddenly responded on twitter and said this guy's got a personality after all that's actually quite funny and you know lots of people would then say in the following years where was that personality when you were leader of the labor party and it was because i was just so i felt too overburdened and oh my god the daily mail is going to take one thing i say out of context and so it made me much more of a constricted person that i actually think i mean i sort of think i do have a somewhat of a personality no you always are but did that thank you very much no i i commend your personality in the house likewise but what did that you mentioned there the daily mail one of your big moments as leader of the labor party was was leveson was leveson deciding and again i can remember long conversations we had about that because it was you basically said these people are out of control they are bad for the country i'm going to go yeah and it was one of my best It was one of the moments when people actually saw I had something distinctive to say.

10:18Carbon Brief sent me an analysis recently, said that you'd had four times more negative editorials. I can't remember the comparison. It was way more than you probably deserve, given the job that you're doing. I'm not saying it's not a very important job, but you're not the leader of the Labour Party anymore. You're not managing the England football team, which is really important jobs. so do you think you still pay a price for what i don't know i don't know look i think some of these uh institutions don't like net zero and some of them don't like me and maybe quite a lot of them don't like either so you don't feel any bitterness about the press i think what i don't like is when people write sort of unfair things which maybe happens quite a lot but i sort of think what's the you know what's what are you going to do about it is the question really rather than feeling a sense of bitterness um before you came in alice was uh teasing me for what my face looks like No, I wasn't.

11:07And he was suggesting in his normal, modest way that I look a bit like Gollum and he looks a bit like James Bond. I think people with glass faces. I'm often accused on Twitter of looking weird and like eating things weirdly. They've never said that about me, Rory. Right. And there's a suggestion that maybe my face, and maybe if I can be so modest also your face, is not quite exactly what they're looking for, for central casting politics. What is that about? Have you ever reflected on that? But you were eating a sandwich and that was an issue, right? And why is eating a sandwich an issue? Did you ever try to understand it?

11:47Did you ever try to? Look, I just don't know. I mean, it's sort of, you know, you look weird. I think somebody in today's programme did a thing saying people think you're ugly or something. You know, it's just sort of. It's sort of bollocks, really, though, isn't it? I don't think I lost the election because of the sandwich. I think it's really, you know, people said that Neil Kinnett lost the 1992 election because of Sheffield. He didn't lose the election because of Sheffield. It's a sort of ex post facto thing. oh we lost because of the sandwich wasn't murdoch once reported to have said we're not taking this guy serious enough we're not attacking him enough so some of the right-wing press thought the sandwich is a way to have a go at him portray him as weird slightly odd all the stuff i mean and why is that powerful in the contemporary era why is that such a sort of powerful meme on social media why why do you think people want their politicians to look kind of classically james i don't think they do actually i sort of maybe that's the sort of transition that we've sort have made i i'm not sure that is what matters johnson's a good example johnson is a good example people think that so much of politics is bullshit and they want people who are just going to sort of cut through the you know it is true this i mean i don't know i'm interested in alistair's reflections on this you know being on message being saying the right thing not having a word out of place the grid the this the that the other that was a very and i'm not saying it was wrong but it was a very 90s sort of new labor thing for totally understandable reasons but i I think in a way people have become much more wise to that.

13:17Well, you say that about the Labour politicians that we've had on the podcast, don't you? Yeah, well, they haven't. I mean, it's very weird. It doesn't look as though a lot of the people we've interviewed have really learned that lesson. Look, it's so hard, Rory, because you are thinking, am I going to get a word out of place? Am I going to be, you know, am I going to be traduced for something I said? Well, even what you said at the end of part one about have we got the vision? Have we got this? If you wanted to take that out of context, you could say, this isn't you talking about you, it's you talking about...

13:44But what is it that you think allows people like Angela Rayner or Boris Johnson to somehow give the impression they don't really care about this, to be really colourful, entertaining interview subjects in a way that some of your colleagues in the Cabinet are not? Well, I don't think it's fair. I'm not going to comment on my other colleagues in the Cabinet, but I don't know. But I think it's important. And I think there's challenges because there's collective responsibility in politics and you've got to be careful. and, you know, all of those things. But I think if there's one lesson I've learned, it's to try to be as much as possible who you are, as much as possible show your real self.

14:20And then you sort of think, well, if people don't like my real self, well, you know, that is what it is. All right, well, a quick break now and then come back and talk about your role, your current role dealing with the future of the planet.

14:38you've known kia for how long since i think about 2008 when i first met him i was introduced by a mutual friend and first impressions incredibly decent uh sort of incredible integrity in the law for the right reasons in politics for the right reasons and you've always been on the front bench in the climate role i started off as this merged role of business climate and But basically, climate has been the thing. Can we get into that a bit? That brief. With pleasure. Because one of the things I'm really interested in on the politics of all this and populism and so forth is how well, how successfully the right, the populist right, have weaponized net zero.

15:23And I just wonder what your reflections were on that, whether you've got the right strategy for dealing with that or whether actually there is a sense that you're kind of on the back foot the whole time now. Absolutely not. We're not on the back foot and we're going to win the argument. So I'm in this odd position where I did the job before 2008, 2010 as climate change secretary. Under Gordon. Under Gordon. Yeah. You know, introduced the Climate Change Act started by my brother, you know, seen through by me, world leading act. So over the last five years, we've constructed a big argument around climate, which I think is the coalition building on the right argument, which is a climate argument and also an energy security argument and a jobs and growth argument.

16:05And I think what is really important is it's absolutely in Keir's DNA. Indeed, he said the other day it's in the DNA of the government. This is the route to secure energy, energy independence. This is the route to lower bills. This is the route to the jobs of the future, and it's the route to doing the right thing for future generations. And it's a really important thing here, which is there is a right-wing ecosystem that wants to say net zero is terrible, and that's not where the public is. talk to any of the pollsters and they say the same thing, which is the attempt to create a successful culture war around net zero to undermine the government is not going to work because it's not where the public is.

16:48Now, that isn't to say we don't need to be careful. And that's why allying the climate argument with the security and bills argument is so important. And the jobs argument is so important, but we absolutely can win and are going to win this argument. I wonder if you can reflect, though, on the way in which we talk about this and why people feel anxious about it. Because it can be seen as part of that whole story of the 90s and 2000s, that you could group it with international development spend, interventions, markets, as being something where experts had a very clear consensus, everybody agreed, everybody was doing the right thing all the parties converged and somehow the public began to become a little bit alienated and anxious what do you think made some people in the public feel a bit anxious but the thing is rory i will sort of answer your your question but just be really careful on the premise here because people are trying to persuade you of the premise that there is a big net zero backlash out there and there just isn't the evidence for this yes there is a political party Winning.

17:58Drill baby drill. Farage pushing net zero. Well, hang on a minute. The AFD. I mean, there's a lot of political entrepreneurs who sense this stuff. Well, hang on a minute. I mean, different things going on. I'm talking about Britain here. Let's start with Britain. And my lesson, which I would apply to Britain and apply elsewhere, is if you say to people, in order to tackle the climate crisis, you, an ordinary person suffering from the cost of living crisis, are going to have to pay thousands of pounds more. It's not going to work, right? But that's not our argument. And here's the two big things have changed since I was last climate change secretary.

18:30First, the situation has got far worse. The emergency has got far worse. It's really important to say that. 10 hottest years since 2015, you know, extreme weather events all around the world from Doncaster to California. But secondly, there's been this dramatic thing that has happened, which is the fall in the price of renewables. So it is now, They're now cheaper than fossil fuels, not just for Britain, but for two thirds of the world. Solar, wind, solar costs down 90 percent, wind costs down 60 percent. And Russia, Ukraine showing our dependence on fossil fuels is what ruined family finances, business finances and the public finances.

19:09And so what's changed is you can ally the energy security bills argument as well as the jobs opportunity with climate today and tomorrow. To be cheeky for a second, I would say that the way you're talking now is exactly the way Alistair would have wanted you to talk. You're defending the record. You're not conceding the criticisms of the opposition. I mean, one of the reasons it's so strong is that you're not tempted to say, well, you know, we got a lot wrong about the way we used to talk about climate change. There are lessons that we've learned, and here's the new thing. You're saying absolutely unambigant.

19:39In fact, you were refusing to accept my premise that there was stuff that we got wrong. Look, I think it's a slightly different category of things. He's defending the president. Well, I'm defending the present and the future. The other thing is, we'll get on to TB and his intervention. Should we read out the messages you sent to me when TB intervened at the Zero debate? I don't know who you're going to deny. I don't know. Can I just explain this? So, yeah, and there'll be a lot of the two of you explaining he didn't quite mean it. But so Tony Blair said the Tony Blair Institute released a report called the Climate Paradox, why we need to reset action on climate change.

20:15In the forward, Blair argued that voters are noticing the credibility gap between being asked to make financial sacrifices and changes in lifestyle, whilst knowing that their impact on global emissions is minimal. Blair also believes that limits to fossil fuels in the short term are doomed to failure. Cue. He didn't quite mean that. It's been taken out of context. And none of you disagree with Tony Blair. Over to you. I'll check it. I'll check it against the text. Alastair and I had a spirited exchange on the day where we agreed, actually. Although I then noticed on the podcast, you sort of said, I said it was a timing issue, which was an extremely sort of, you know, chicken shit way out, if I may say so.

20:55Look, basically said, what the F is he up to now? Yeah, okay. The report itself, because he wrote forward to the report, the report itself is perfectly unobjectionable. That's what I said. Well, he didn't quite say that. He just said there was a timing problem. The report itself, what's disappointing about Tony's forward? and I have huge respect for Tony, is I think it's incredibly defeatist, which is not what Tony is. It's really defeatist. Well, to say that fossil fuels... Well, it sort of says we're not going to succeed and we're not going to achieve 1.5. The whole thing is it's all going badly.

21:31Let me just give you some context to this. When I was Climate Change Secretary, nobody mentioned the word net zero. I didn't know the term net zero because our ambition was for 80 % reductions in emissions by 2050, right? Pre-Trump, but still a majority, 90 % of the world was covered by net zero targets. Now it's something like, well, it's a majority of the world, right? I was looking back because I'm an absolute bloody nerd at a document you both won't be familiar with called the UNEP emissions gap report. We did an emergency program. I'm sure we did. Right, in 2010. Actually, preparing for this made me sort of think about this.

22:10They said that this was after the Copenhagen Climate Summit, which didn't go well. They said that the pathways from Copenhagen through to 2100 imply temperature increase of between 2.5 to 5 degrees, right? We were heading for potentially up to 5 degrees. Now, we are heading for something like 2.5, maybe 3 degrees. Don't get me wrong. Two and a half, three years, very bad. But it's just not true to say the world hasn't made progress. The world, in its very difficult way through the multilateral process, which is kind of a nightmare, has made progress. India has a net zero target. China has a net zero target.

22:49The UK has a net zero target. Now, is China and India doing everything right? No. Is Britain doing everything right? We're trying to. But it's not true that the world isn't taking this seriously. Why? Why? It's because of self-interest. It's self-interest and economic opportunity. They think they see the dangers of climate, what it's doing, and they see that actually there is a path through. To channel Tony Blair for a moment, right? I mean, surely he's right. There is a kind of credibility gap between the changes in lifestyle that are being demanded with the fact that actually, as he points out, the impact on global emissions of what you're doing is going to be minimal.

23:27Well, OK, two points. One, I don't like the phrase changes in lifestyle. We're going to have better lives for people in the net zero world. Right. The Climate Change Committee in their seventh carbon budget published earlier this year says that moving to net zero will cut people's energy bills by 700 pounds, will cut people's motoring costs by 700 pounds. That's a better life for people. Warmer homes, tackling fuel poverty, green spaces, good jobs. They're all good things about it. And secondly, I think you, if I may say so, in that question, are being far too defeatist about Britain. We passed the Climate Change Act 2008, started by my brother, completed by me.

24:06Countries around the world were the first to do it. Countries around the world emulated us. Lots of countries around the world. we've got this mission, clean power by 2030. If we achieve that, and I'm absolutely determined we do, other countries will say, look, look what Britain's been able to do. We can do that too. So let's not have a diminished view of Britain. We really matter in this. So many countries come to me and say, you've got a really important responsibility here. First episode, you mentioned the trade unions two or three times. One of your biggest critics on this is gary smith the gmb who i i bumped into an airport not long ago and he was absolutely sure on the oil and gas in particular so you in a way does it you feel like feels to me like you're being got at from the right and to some extent by the look look gary and i agree on a lot he is worried about the north sea he's seen 70 000 jobs go in the north sea in the last decade because the North Sea is a declining basin, our responsibility, working with Gary and others, is to make sure that we have a proper transition, a fair transition.

25:14Now, here's the absolute key to this. Why did those 70 ,000 jobs went and they weren't replaced? Why? Because the government didn't have a proper industrial policy to have carbon capture and storage and jobs in offshore wind and hydrogen and all those things. And our job, our responsibility, which I'm determined we achieve, is to create those jobs. Things like Great British Energy. We'll come on to this in a sec, but, you know, Great British Energy, publicly owned energy company, pushed forward by this government. Anyway, part of achieving that. Just taking the passion down for a second, which is wonderful.

25:48We don't mind passion. Moving and beautiful. God, you say that to every guest. What are the risks? I mean, let's say, contrary to everything that you hope, in 20 years' time, it hasn't quite worked out that we replay this tape. And people are like, really? Did it really work out like that in the North Sea? Did it really work out like that for energy bills? What are the risks that you're thinking about? What are the two or three things that could go wrong and that you really worry about that might stop your dream coming true? The biggest single risk, Rory, is that we are held in absolute contempt by future generations because they say you as a generation were in a unique position.

26:37You knew about the problem. You knew about the scale of the problem. You saw wildfires. You saw heatwave deaths. By the way, 10 ,000 in the UK since 2020, according to the UK Health Agency. You knew the problem and you had time to do something about it and you totally fucked it up. You didn't do it. That is - No, no, but I think it's a really important point, Rory, that that is by far the biggest risk. And in 10 years' time, people are going to be saying not, why were you taking this issue so seriously? They say, why the hell weren't you taking this issue more seriously than any other issue? That, I guess, is my question, right?

27:19Right. So let's say in 20 years' time, people do say that, right? And you didn't succeed in doing what they would have liked you to do. What would be the factors that would lead to that failure? I think you've got to bring the public with you by making people better off, by converting the opportunity of cheaper, cleaner power into people's homes, into people's lives. And what are the obstacles to that? What might stop that happening? One of the reasons I think a Labour government is best placed to do this is that if you think about this, there are sort of benefits and burdens of this transition.

27:54And it's government expenditure, the role of government that makes those things fair and make sure that ordinary people benefit from these changes. So putting in a heat pump, we've got to make sure, yes, we need people to convert to heat pumps. We've got to make sure it's affordable for them and it's going to be cheaper to run the heat pump. EVs, electric vehicles, similarly. It's got to make sense for ordinary people to have the cost of living crisis. That is the single biggest thing. And the obstacle there, presumably, if you don't succeed in doing it, will be that in the end, you weren't, for whatever reason, able to make it fully affordable.

28:29Yeah, I think we can, though. Where's the passion in the government for what you've just shown on climate for child poverty, for what's happening now in Gaza? I guess I'm asking about the things that maybe we've talked a lot about reform and the sort of catastrophe that happened to part from the mayor in Doncaster in the local elections. But Labour's also seems to me got problems on the liberal side of politics as well. So you said at the end of episode one, you know, the exam test, have we got the policy solutions to meet the challenge of the time? What's your kind of what's your own answer to that?

29:07I think what's interesting about the government is, as I was hinting at it by talking about GB Energy, is there's an untold progressive story of the government, which we need to tell more. Just think about 10 months in, we had a budget that raised taxes on the wealthy and business to fund, properly fund public services to Rachel Reeves' massive credit that she did that. She also changed her fiscal rules, adjusted the way she accounted for them in order to sort of ensure that you could properly take advantage of investment. We've got the biggest package of workers' rights for a generation. We're renationalizing the railways.

29:42We've got a big renter's rights package. We're raising the minimum wage. We need to tell that story. There is a progressive story to be told about this government, which I think is a very sort of plausible good story. We need to tell it more. What are the obstacles to that? I don't know. like the the noise the the sort of the pressures of government um collective responsibility to do that but i'm proud of lots and lots of things that the government's done but are you are you saying that it's just coming over a bit technocratic whereas what you're trying to say through how you've described your own brief how you talked about gordon in particular that in the end it has you have to get fire i think in it look it was it you and i who used to say when we were in government, as a member of the government, you don't commentate on the government, you act.

30:37So I'm not going to commentate, but what I am going to say is I feel a sense of responsibility, as I'm sure my colleagues do, to tell this story about the progressive good things this government is doing. And when I look around the cabinet table from Keir outwards, I see progressive people who are in politics for the right reasons and want to make the country a fairer place. No, okay. I'm going to stop this at the moment because I think the risk is that all the stuff, all the charm of the authenticity is going out the window because it's becoming, understandably, the defence of the government, which is not the most fascinating thing.