Ed Miliband (Image: Getty)
Ed Miliband isn’t just out of touch—he’s the cheerleader for a radical climate ideology so blinkered it’s turning Britain into an economic basket case. While families struggle with sky-high bills and crumbling industries, Miliband’s messianic net zero campaign marches on, unmoored from economic reality, common sense, and now, increasingly, from the world stage. Even the titans of global finance—like HSBC—are seeing the futility of this climate dogma and heading for the exits.
HSBC, one of the world’s largest banks, has just made a stunning move that exposes the cracks in the climate façade. On Friday, the London-based giant announced its withdrawal from the UN-backed Net-Zero Banking Alliance, following the lead of 17 other top banks across the globe.
HSBC was a founding member of this climate coalition, established in 2021 to push the financial sector toward “net zero” lending and investments by 2050. But after years of grand promises and sluggish progress, even HSBC has ditched this costly charade, joining walkouts by Wall Street’s biggest names—Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, and Morgan Stanley—and Canada’s “Big Six,” who all bailed following a US political shift earlier this year.
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The message from these banking heavyweights is unmissable: the net zero orthodoxy is crumbling under the weight of its own hypocrisy, expense, and sheer impracticality. While HSBC publicly insists it’s “resolutely focused” on its own climate targets, its abrupt departure from the alliance signals growing discomfort with utopian UN-led targets totally disconnected from the economic realities facing banks and their customers. The fact that a pioneer like HSBC—with trillions in client assets and strategic interests across the world—has stepped back should be a wake-up call to policymakers drunk on climate evangelism.
But Ed Miliband, intoxicated by his own rhetoric, presses on and on and on. He styles himself as the “radical truth-teller,” but his version of truth starts with fear and ends with social control. Miliband’s entire approach relies on frightening the public into submission, recklessly bullying anyone who challenges the marching orders of the green priesthood. If you dare question the costs, dare object to lost jobs, or simply want a say in your children’s future, Miliband slanders you as a traitor to “future generations.” Rational debate is replaced by emotional blackmail—all to strong-arm Britain into policies most of the world is now quietly abandoning.
It’s as if Miliband has learned nothing from reality. The fact remains that Britain’s contribution to global emissions is insignificant—around 0.9% of world totals—while countries like China emit over 30% and are building two new coal plants per week without a care for speeches or “targets.” Yet, Miliband insists British households bankroll an ever-growing list of green experiments and betrayals. The annual public spend on net zero policies has now ballooned to over £30 billion every year, surpassing the combined budgets of the Home Office and Ministry of Justice.
Add to that Miliband’s latest costly ruse, the “Electric Car Grant”—another £650 million poured into a collapsing EV market, offering consumer discounts up to £3,750 per shiny new vehicle as ordinary people grow ever less able to afford day-to-day essentials.
Britain now boasts the highest energy bills in Europe, with prices at least 70% above the EU average—a direct result of years of green levies, unreliable renewables, and the treasured “net zero leadership” Miliband claims as a badge of honour. Those sky-high prices aren’t theoretical. They’re wiping out family savings and forcing industries dating back centuries to close their doors. In just the past decade, the British steel sector has shrunk by 40%, bled dry by the world’s most expensive energy—a deliberate by-product of Miliband and his ideological allies.
What about the promised “green jobs revolution”? It’s vanished like smoke. The Office for National Statistics reveals that so-called green jobs are down by 28,000 since 2014. Miliband peddles “transformative growth” but the numbers show jobs and investment have been stripped from the country’s industrial heartlands and funnelled into a handful of policymaker-friendly regions. Despite endless slogans touting an £83.1 billion “net zero economy,” less than one-third of that comes from actually productive, new green businesses. The rest is supply chain padding and financial engineering.
Worse still, support for net zero craters when the real pain becomes obvious. While 89% of the public are “aware” of net zero, only 52% say they actually know much about it—and when told about higher bills, car bans, and forced home upgrades, support plummets below 30%. No wonder Miliband is reduced to bullying: when reason fails, he reaches for labels like “liar” and “saboteur” to silence dissent.
And it all rests on predictions, not proven science. The 2008 Climate Change Act, which Miliband used to launch this crusade, was justified with apocalyptic nonsense—that CO₂ would crash food supplies and trigger global famine. In fact, global grain harvests are up almost 50% since 2000, with warmer weather and higher CO₂ benefiting agriculture far more than the alarmists will ever admit.
Now, with Miliband doubling down on a failed model just as even the most committed global institutions, like HSBC, are walking away, the absurdity is complete. The world’s brightest financial and industrial minds are already voting with their feet, stepping back from the edge, but Britain’s Energy Secretary is using fear to enforce conformity and convince the public that questioning net zero doctrine is treasonous.
Britain isn’t being led, it’s being herded—by a green fantasist who equates disagreement with betrayal and forces ordinary people to pay for his ever-growing mistakes. As the climate cult loses its grip around the globe, Miliband remains the loudest true believer, marching Britain fast toward a future of lower growth, shrinking opportunity, and national irrelevance—all in the name of an ideology the world’s smartest players are already abandoning.