RICHARD NORTH
It is very difficult for me to write about energy these days. Having started blogging about the issue over 20 years ago, warning then about the dangers of letting climate ideology drive policy, my stance is more akin to standing back and watching the skies darken as mega-flocks of chickens come home to roost.
The task of writing is made all the more difficult when one has to confront Burn’em’s choice of energy secretary, where the prime minister has achieved the almost impossible – appointing someone who is actually worse than Ed Miliband.
But that is Miatta Fahnbulleh (pictured), a Liberian migrant, daughter of a high-ranking Liberian politician who was best mate of the murderous dictator Samuel Kanyon Doe who had seized power in 1980 in a bloody coup, executing the sitting president and launching a campaign of torture and mass killing, until he too was deposed and assassinated in 1990 during the First Liberian Civil War.
Father, Henry Boimah Fahnbulleh Jr, a lefty “intellectual”, was initially a close associate of Samuel Doe, but later became a prominent political opponent. He fled the country to avoid imprisonment and possible execution, taking his family with him, living first in Ghana and then moving to England in 1986 as a refugee.
There, young Miatta lived a comfortable elite lifestyle, attending private school, before studying PPE at Oxford and then obtaining a PhD at the LSE with a thesis on the adoption of and success of industrial policy in Ghana and Kenya.
With such a stellar background, she became Head of Cities in the policy unit at the Cabinet Office from 2011 to 2013; the director of policy and research at the IPPR from December 2016 to November 2017; and the Chief Executive of the New Economics Foundation between November 2017 and December 2023. She was also a Policy Fellow at the think tank Labour Together.
Married to a hedge fund owner, with three children (all of whom attend private schools), she was elected as MP for Peckham in 2024 and, having been in parliament for only 22 months, she became the first government minister to resign her post – then Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Devolution, Faith and Communities – in support of calls for Starmer to step down.
Handsomely rewarded for her treachery, she was appointed Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero under Burnham, on 20 July, with precisely no experience as a cabinet minister and even less of energy policy.
One would struggle to find anything good to say about this uniquely unqualified DEI hire, especially when she takes it upon herself to lecture us about the causes of the stratospherically high energy prices but would merely mirror the sentiments of an admirer (not) who calls her a “thick-as-pig-shit energy minister”, telling “batshit crazy lies”, as she tries to convince us that the Iran war is responsible for the latest electricity price hike.
These “crazy lies” underline the singular points that the appointment of the daughter of an African dictator’s minister to such a sensitive post, at a time when energy bills are soaring, is an insult to the British people, and not just because it signals Burnham’s determination to shut down the energy debate, and his resistance to adopting a more rational policy.
It says something of Fahnbulleh’s input, though, that even the far left Morning Star is in throat-ripping mode, publishing a critical piece with the headline: “Britain is not powerless over war’s impact, whatever the Energy Secretary says”.
It too is entirely unconvinced by Fahnbulleh’s Iran war schtick, stating that she is “trying to abdicate any government responsibility for the latest hike in household energy bills”, declaring of the energy secretary’s unacceptable truth that: “Energy price rises have hit millions of consumers not only financially, but also in terms of their quality of life, health and well-being”.
That’s something, the paper says, she and her government can control, if they have the will, although its notion of how to improve the situation is perhaps worse than the problems we face.
It would have the government “disband the farce that is Ofgem”, freeze energy prices – already among the highest in Europe – and tax monopoly profits (£70 billion to shareholders since 2010). It then wants the government to go on the offensive, taking the whole energy sector back into public ownership and using surplus revenues to invest in solar, tidal and wind power.
By contrast, we see a surprisingly rational piece from Nils Pratley in the Guardian, headlined: “Labour’s energy bills crisis is getting worse. Political honesty is essential”, with him expounding the thesis that “Ofgem and ministers should be transparent about why energy bills for households are expected to stay stubbornly high”.
Pratley too rejects Fahnbulleh’s attempt to blame the usual culprit – the fossil fuel price “rollercoaster”, which has been given a shove this time by Donald Trump’s “Middle East misadventure”.
Higher gas prices will indeed be the main quarter-on-quarter reason why bills stand at a three-year high on a unit basis, he concedes, but asserts that there is more to the tale on a longer view. Even when the gas rollercoaster dips downwards, he says, the energy industry’s medium-term projections suggest bills will not fall meaningfully.
He looks at a recent forecast from EDF. one of the big retail suppliers, which projects the current average electricity bill of £1,721 for the last three months of 2026 rising to £1,786 in 2030.
The number would be £90 lower if the government extends VAT relief on electricity and continues to take a portion of older green levies into general taxation, Pratley adds, remarking that former energy secretary Ed Miliband’s naive, or cynical, “£300 off bills by 2030” promise looks non-operative at this point.
The interesting thing here is that EDF can be reasonably confident in its figures because, whatever happens with wholesale prices, more of the bill now comprises easier-to-predict “non-commodity costs”.
These cover everything from charges for running and upgrading the gas and electricity grids, price contracts for wind and solar generators, carbon taxes, the cost of the warm home discount for vulnerable households and more. On the electricity side, the wholesale element is just 30 percent of the bill these days.
This knocks on the head the oft-heard claim that domestic bills are so high because of the rocketing price of gas, compared with the wholesale price of renewables. It cannot be said too often that the wholesale price represents only a fraction of what we have to pay.
EDF – which in my view has been sluggishly complacent about our train-wreck energy policy – is now getting worried, evidently concerned by growing price resistance and increasing consumer debt.
As of mid-2026, British households owe a record £6 billion in unpaid consumer energy debt and arrears, on its way up to £7 billion by the end of the year.
It evidently thinks that part of the solution is greater transparency on future costs, expressing its astonishment that Ofgem does not make medium-term forecasts to give customers a rough idea of what to expect, so that they can make “informed decisions” about their future energy plans.
The lack of precision from Ofgem, EDF says, makes a supposedly independent regulator appear politically captured. It looks afraid to give the awkward message that the “necessary” energy transition – to accommodate net zero -is expensive in the short- and medium-term – and probably getting more expensive.
Pratley asserts that openness would allow everybody to see where the pressures are coming from. The current suspect, he says, is the transmission network and the £70 billion programme to relieve constraints and hook up new generation.
The industry as a whole complains that there is very limited public information “to assess whether the current programme of investment remains the right one”, with EDF calling for “a radical increase in transparency” and a strategic review.
But, if Pratley thinks Miliband is naïve, the idea that transparency would help is not far different. Complete openness from the government would simply bring it home to the public how much net zero and the rush to renewables is costing us and, perhaps, stiffen price resistance to the extent that the £7 billion debt could soon become a fond memory.
One way or another, the public is not going to rush out to fit heat pumps (52,000 installed last year versus 1 million-plus gas boilers) or buy electric cars, and increasingly resents the surge in domestic energy prices.
On the other hand, Fahnbulleh’s lies are convincing no one. The only thing transparent about Labour’s energy policy its lies. Thus, the most accurate thing that comes out of Pratley’s piece is his headline: “Labour’s energy bills crisis is getting worse”. And it will get worse still.
(UKR)