Ed Miliband’s net zero push is not only “completely mad” but a threat to national security, a former head of MI6 has warned.
Sir Richard Dearlove believes that the Energy Secretary’s push to achieve clean power by 2030 and net zero carbon emissions by 2050 are playing into the hands of Beijing.
The Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has already accused UK prime minister Sir Keri Starmer and enery secretary Ed Miliband of making Britain “dangerously dependent” on China through the 2050 zero emissions target.
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The Telegraph reports: China provides much of the renewable energy infrastructure needed to decarbonise Britain’s energy grid. It is also the market leader for electric vehicle manufacturing.
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Sir Richard, who served as chief of the Secret Intelligence Service from 1999 until 2004, said Mr Miliband was pressing ahead with his green policies in an “irrational” way.
He told the i paper: “The problem is you’ve got the ideological Ed Miliband pursuing zero carbon without a thought for the impact on national security.
“The whole policy is completely mad… He probably thinks: ‘I’m dealing with a more serious problem, which is climate change, and that comes first.’ It’s so irrational. It is seriously problematic.”
Fears around Chinese espionage have grown in the past couple of decades, and Chinese intelligence services are neither subject to independent oversight nor the rule of law.
GCHQ’s National Cyber Security Centre previously warned that a Chinese state-affiliated actor was “almost certainly responsible” for targeting MPs’ and peers’ emails in 2021.
The Electoral Commission was subsequently compromised between 2021 and 2022, with GCHQ officials once again blaming an agent linked to the Chinese state.
More recently, Christopher Cash, a parliamentary researcher, was charged with carrying out espionage work on behalf of China.
However, the Government insisted that Britain needed to co-operate with China despite national security warnings after a separate scandal in which it emerged Prince Andrew had formed a close business relationship with an alleged Chinese spy.