Despite a disastrous election defeat in 2015, the shadow climate change secretary’s passion for politics is undimmed. He talks Labour, Ukraine and why he came back for more
On the day I meet Ed Miliband at his big, Victorian house near Hampstead Heath, the sky is grey and the mood is sombre. He has just hot-footed it back from Westminster, where earlier MPs gave Vadym Prystaiko, the Ukrainian ambassador to London, a long and loud standing ovation, the sound of which is even now ringing in his ears. “I don’t care much about what the House of Commons does and doesn’t do,” he says, when I ask if this was touching (convention has it that the chamber doesn’t indulge in applause). “But yes, it was incredibly moving. Normally, I never go to PMQs because of the obvious: PTSD… and it’s sort of rubbish. But I wanted to be there [today].” So prime minister’s questions is still a trigger for him, is it? An ordeal requiring three Valium and several gins? He laughs. “Yeah, that sort of thing.” But I shouldn’t joke. The atmosphere at Westminster is, he says, one of shock. “I was talking to a Tory MP on the way in – I talk to Tory MPs quite a lot – and everybody feels… To see this happening on our doorstep, such a brutal act of aggression.”
Does he fear the worst? He hesitates. “As in?” I mean, does he worry that this war is going to be extremely bloody and protracted? Hmm. The former leader of the Labour party is, of course, theoretically in recovery from certain aspects of traditional politics. It’s seven long years since he stepped down from that job, a move that was supposed to herald liberation (and he is wearing jeans today). But old habits die hard. His second thought, if not his first, is for how the conflict will affect his brief as shadow secretary of state for climate change. “One thing that’s encouraging is that Europe, the US and Britain have acted on sanctions. They didn’t just go through the motions; they did a lot more than that. Even on energy. Europe is reliant on Russian gas, and they’re thinking: how do we diversify out of this? There is a real will to do everything possible economically.” The transition to clean energy is going to have to happen much faster, and go much further, whether Nigel Farage and the Tory right like it or not: “It’s not just a climate case. It’s an energy security case.”
