Ed Miliband is the “most dangerous man in Britain” and his push for net zero threatens the security and prosperity of the nation, according to the woman fighting to keep the country’s lights on. Claire Coutinho, 40, fears the UK’s oil and gas industry will be destroyed on Labour’s watch with disastrous consequences for jobs, the economy and the UK’s long-term safety.
The Shadow Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero denounces her opposite number’s plans as “mad”. Instead of lowering the curtain on oil and gas extraction, she says the priority should be bringing down the cost of living by securing “cheap energy” for British households.
Even by the sharp-elbowed standards of Westminster, her attack on Mr Miliband’s policies is ferocious. Britain’s oil and gas sector is the “envy of the world” but is being “wilfully destroyed” by Labour, she claims.
“Just a few weeks ago we saw a summit where China, Iran, Russia and North Korea were getting together to talk about a new world order,” she says. “They must be laughing about the fact here in Britain we’re trying to shut down our own domestic energy.”
The push to embrace wind and solar technology risks deepening Britain’s dependence on China when there are worrying questions, she adds, about that country’s long-term reliability, the use of slave labour, and the risk of energy systems being hacked.
“I think Ed Miliband is the most dangerous man in Britain,” she says. “That’s because he is doing what no other country is doing, which is shutting down our domestic energy supply.”
Ms Coutinho sat at the cabinet table during Rishi Sunak’s last year in power as Energy Secretary. Now, she argues, Britain’s energy policy is driven by “ideologues” who want to “shut down the North Sea because all they care about is cutting domestic emissions”.
She predicts the Government’s decision to hike the maximum amount it is prepared to pay for offshore wind energy from £102 per megawatt hour to £113 will lead to “real hardship” for people when their bills come in. And she takes a shot at “dodgy climate change accounting which cheers as industry shuts down in Britain”, claiming it is “completely nonsensical” to burn carbon by importing gas from abroad when it could be sourced locally.
As she sees it, nothing less than the future of the UK is in danger.
“Energy security is everything,” she says. “If you can’t keep the lights on you can’t protect the country. It’s as simple as that.”
Labour last year described how its “green prosperity plan” aimed to “cut bills by £300 on average”.
But Ms Coutinho says: “I think Keir Starmer knows that Ed Miliband’s not going to cut bills. He must know by now that the £300 promise they made at the election was total garbage.”
Nigel Farage has said net zero could be the “next Brexit” and prove the issue which wins Reform UK the general election. If voters care so deeply, Tory survival could hinge on whether Ms Coutinho can win their trust on this key topic.
She argues Reform is “as ideological as Labour” when it comes to net zero, insisting having a “sensible” policy which “puts cheap energy first is a clear priority for us”. She praises advances in boiler efficiency and the switch to energy efficient LED lightbulbs.
“What I really rail against is people deciding people in Britain should be poorer in the name of climate change and that jobs should be lost here when all that means is we’re bringing more [energy] from abroad from places which frankly don’t have the same environmental standards,” she says.
Warning of reliance on imports, she states: “We know we’re going to import more steel, we’re going to import more chemicals – we’re importing more gas at the moment because of Labour’s policies. That’s simply mad and it’s not the right thing.”
Britain’s energy vulnerability is by no means Ms Coutinho’s only worry. She looks across the Channel where France has amassed a £2.8trillion public debt and political chaos has resulted in the ousting of successive prime ministers.
“France is in a real mess and it should serve as a warning to us,” she says. “The thing that I worry about is too often in history politicians have grasped the nettle far too late.”
She applauds Kemi Badenoch’s record so far, saying: “She was right about net zero, she was right about the grooming gangs, she was right about dangerous trans ideology, and at the moment she is the only person talking about welfare and talking about the fact our borrowing costs are out of control.”
As a maths and philosophy graduate working on a trading floor in the City, she watched as Greece was consumed by its credit crisis. This drove home to her the importance of a nation “living within your means”.
Her Conservative beliefs deepened when – to her dad’s shock – she took a giant pay cut and spent time with organisations including the Centre for Social Justice, looking at how to revive “left behind” areas and help people “whose lives had fallen apart”. She grew convinced lives can be turned around when people gain the power to take control of their circumstances.
“I fundamentally believe that it’s best to give as much power as you can to the people,” she says. “It’s not the state that’s going to fix your life.”
She won a special adviser post at the Treasury and served as a trusted aide to its then-Chief Secretary Rishi Sunak. And she jumped into frontline politics in 2019 she was elected MP for East Surrey – the former political home of Geoffrey Howe.
Spells as a junior minister for disabled people and children and families followed before Mr Sunak entrusted her with the energy brief. There was little surprise when this daughter of doctors who came to the UK from India won the “rising star” award at the Spectator’s parliamentary awards in 2023.
Now, she is working to rebuild public trust in the Conservatives. Opposition has not dimmed her trademark enthusiasm, and her life was transformed in January with the birth of a son.
“When you have children it changes everything,” she says. “And, yes, I think a lot about legacy.
“I think a lot about what we’re passing on to the next generation.”
Despite dangers on multiple fronts, Britain remains a “brilliant country”, she insists, pointing to free speech, democracy and the rule of law.
But, she adds, we need to “cherish” these “wonderful things” and “for too long people have been trying to tear them down and we’ve been too bashful about trying to protect them. I think there is absolutely hope for Britain but we need to have politicians who are brave to stick up for it.”
Her parliamentary office has a brilliant view of a statue of Winston Churchill. Ms Coutinho relishes the challenge of reviving the party he lived and the country he loved.