“Whenever the Labour party feels a bit sad,” according to one close observer of the current government, speaking some months ago, “they wheel out Ed Miliband to talk about rooftop solar.”
It might not have been literally true, but it often felt during Keir Starmer’s premiership as if energy secretary Miliband brought the sun. Unfailingly upbeat, with a simple message that was understandable to voters, he had a clear mission – to decarbonise the UK’s power sector by 2030 – that was seen to be progressing fast.
