It’s a busy day for the Labour lot, what with Rachel Reeves’s big growth speech this morning and Sir Keir Starmer’s PMQs at noon. But as viewers tuned in to watch the back-and-forth play out between the Prime Minister and Tory leader Kemi Badenoch, there was one rather notable absence on the Labour benches. Energy Secretary Ed Miliband was nowhere to be seen.
In fact, PMQs isn’t the only thing the Energy Secretary chose to skip today. Miliband decided not grace the Chancellor with his presence during her address this morning where she formally backed plans to build a third runway at Heathrow Airport – proposals that Ed had previously threatened to resign over under Gordon Brown. In fact, the now-Energy Secretary has spoken out against expansion plans multiple times and was one of the MPs to vote against them in 2018. How very interesting…
Just days ago Miliband was adamant that he would not resign if the plans are given the green light this time around, insisting – as Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds did on the airwaves this morning – that the Labour government can meet both its environmental and growth missions together. When quizzed directly on whether he would consider stepping down if Starmer’s army approved the Heathrow plans, Miliband hit back: ‘Don’t be ridiculous, no.’ Well, he didn’t think it was so ridiculous back in 2009, eh?
On Monday, Miliband’s reservations seemed to rise to the surface once again as he spoke to the environmental audit committee about airport expansion plans. ‘Any aviation expansion must be justified within carbon budgets, and if it can’t be justified, it won’t go ahead,’ the Energy Secretary vowed, suggesting that a final decision on Heathrow should wait under the release of the Climate Change Committee’s carbon budget next month. And today’s no-show hints Miliband may still have real issues with Reeves’s stance on the matter. Talk about trouble in paradise…
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