Rant against the Chinese
22 Dec 2009
Ed Miliband is a clever and able politician as shown earlier this year by his energy strategy, which somehow managed to balance the need to maintain the UK’s diverse energy mix – and so keep the lights on over the next decade at least – with ambitious targets for emissions reductions.
Since then, however, Miliband seems to have got a bit carried away in his role as climate change secretary: this week blaming China for the failure of world leaders to reach agreement on climate change in Copenhagen.
However justified such accusations might be, Miliband’s attempt to name and shame China can only backfire by making it more difficult (at least for the UK) to engage with China in future climate change discussions. More seriously, though, his lack of diplomacy could handicap UK companies trying to secure contracts on huge engineering programmes in the world’s most dynamic economy.
