We are already getting a glimpse of what Miliband would be like in No. 11

Westminster is, as ever, a rumour mill. One of the latest doing the rounds concerns Ed Miliband – and whether his eventual destination in a future Labour government might be the Treasury. The failed Labour leader, now Energy Secretary, is increasingly tipped as a possible Chancellor in a post–Keir Starmer world.

But we may not need to speculate about what he would be like in No11. In many ways, the Miliband chancellorship is already on display.

Take energy policy. Miliband continues to press ahead with a ban on new North Sea drilling licences even as Norway – sharing the same basin – celebrates a string of new oil discoveries, including one of the largest in a decade. At the same time he maintains the North Sea windfall tax, widely faulted with hastening the decline of Britain’s oil and gas sector. The push towards ever more stringent net-zero obligations continues apace, even when the immediate effect is to increase costs for British taxpayers and businesses.

What is striking is how little this seems to trouble him – even when allies offer their warnings. Tony Blair has said the UK is heading in the wrong direction, and urged a reversal in the ban on new licences. Greg Jackson, the chief executive of Octopus Energy and hardly a fossil-fuel diehard, has pointed out that if Britain is going to use gas, it might as well use domestic supplies rather than importing liquefied natural gas from overseas. Even the chair of Miliband’s own GB Energy has cautioned that “oil and gas is our foundation”, warning of “haemorrhaging workers too fast and risks losing supply chains”.

None of it appears to matter. Miliband presses on regardless.

It is a revealing trait and this set of policies perhaps one of the clearest examples of just how uncompromising he is – putting dogged pursuit of his own pet projects and ideology at the cost of other people’s finances.

Miliband’s view is that he can centralise everything and see it run through the state. Consider GB Energy itself – the much-trumpeted state-backed energy company which, somewhat awkwardly, will not actually produce any energy. Miliband promised that it would lead to “mind-blowing” reductions in household bills. For now, it looks rather more like a vanity vehicle for his own ideology. Or take his intervention in the wind sector, where unionisation has effectively been mandated by government fiat.

As one Tory puts it bluntly: “He basically hates markets and doesn’t meet with business.”

The signs of what a Miliband Treasury might look like extend well beyond energy. During budget debates he has been among the most vocal advocates of scrapping the two-child benefit cap, accusing Conservatives who support it of seeking “to blame the poor for their poverty”.

Quite aside from that row, he bragged about how he has long championed higher taxes across a familiar list of targets: expensive homes, landlords, and gambling firms among them.

His broader philosophy was neatly summarised:

“Our vision of what makes an economy succeed is different from that of Conservative Members. We believe that public investment crowds in and does not crowd out private investment; that the only route to economic success is a government who support industry and workers with a proper industrial strategy; and that rights at work and strong trade unions are not an impediment to a good economy but an essential ingredient of it.”

Let’s take a look at how that vision is going: Good luck with private investment when this Labour government has seeb business confidence at some of its lowest levels; Industries, like hospitality, have been crying out for help as they collapse under Labour’s tax rises; And it’s all well and good saying you’re trying to create new workers’ rights, but what good does that do them when employers can’t afford to hire in the first place.

The two-child cap debate illustrates another tension. Conservatives have pointed out that retaining the cap would save roughly £3.2 billion – enough, they argue, to fund the recruitment of 20,000 additional soldiers, alongside their accommodation and equipment.

Which raises a further question: where exactly would defence spending rank in a Miliband Treasury? He famously opposed military action against Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria in 2013, whipping Labour MPs to block intervention. More recently, he has expressed deep reservations about military action against Iran, and reports suggest he was among those wary of even allowing the United States to use British bases for strikes.

Would a Chancellor Miliband be eager to prioritise defence spending in a more dangerous world?

To look again at his budget remarks, he said: “With the world at its most perilous for generations, their [Conservative] policy is to cross their fingers and hope…” and that is exactly what he is doing. It is a perilous moment for the country’s finances, for energy and fuel prices, yet Miliband presses on with his uncompromising ideology and hoping for the best.

Shadow energy secretary Claire Coutinho put the dividing line starkly in response to him in the Commons: “Labour Members believe the best way out of poverty is welfare; I think the best way is jobs and growth.”

If Miliband ever does make it to No. 11, that argument may well define his chancellorship. The trouble for Britain is that, on current evidence, we are already beginning to see how it might turn out.