UK newspapers have already launched more editorials attacking Ed Miliband in the first four months of 2025 than they did during the whole of 2024, Carbon Brief analysis reveals.
In the year to date, predominantly right-leaning publications have published 65 editorials – articles seen as the newspaper’s formal “voice” – criticising the UK energy secretary, compared with only 61 across the full year of 2024.
Nearly four such editorials have been published every week so far in 2025, roughly three times the rate of the previous year.
This is a significant escalation from a period that had already seen an unprecedented torrent of attacks levelled at the energy secretary.
The articles, which primarily appear in the Sun, the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph, frequently seek to label Miliband as a “net-zero zealot” with a “messianic” devotion to climate action.
The newspapers have focused specifically on Miliband’s support for renewables.
They have also tried to blame him for the potential closure of the UK’s remaining steel plant and – most recently – misrepresented the words of former prime minister Sir Tony Blair to falsely present them as a personal rebuke to Miliband.
Many of the articles urge prime minister Keir Starmer to “sack” Miliband due to his supposedly “radical” policy ideas, referring to him as a “liability” for the Labour government.
Despite this near-obsessive stream of criticism and constant speculation about the energy secretary’s job security, the prime minister has said unequivocally that the net-zero agenda is “in my government’s DNA” and that Miliband is “doing a great job”.
Record criticism
The UK’s Labour government won an election last summer, with a large majority, on the back of a manifesto that focused heavily on climate action.
As laid out at the time, one of the government’s “five missions” was to:
“Make Britain a clean-energy superpower to cut bills, create jobs and deliver security with cheaper, zero-carbon electricity by 2030.”
Miliband, the energy security and net-zero secretary, is the minister overseeing this brief and the public face of much of the government’s net-zero strategy.
This position has resulted in a relentless stream of criticism and personal attacks from right-leaning commentators and media organisations, against a backdrop of rising political and press opposition to net-zero.
Carbon Brief analysis in January revealed the scale of the personal attacks levelled at Miliband in newspaper editorials during 2024, both in the lead up to the general election and in the months that followed.
However, the new analysis shows that the 61 critical editorials published last year have already been eclipsed in 2025 after barely four months of intense focus on Miliband.
As of 2 May, predominantly right-leaning newspapers have already published 65 editorials taking aim at the energy secretary this year. The chart below, which shows the cumulative number of such editorials, highlights this rapid escalation.
Specific events, often only vaguely related to the energy secretary, have inflated the criticism of Miliband in the media.
One example was the imminent closure of the UK’s last remaining steel blast furnaces in Scunthorpe, in early April. Right-leaning newspapers blamed Miliband, among other things, for “banning new coal mines” in the UK, which they argued could have provided coking coal to the facility.
(The Scunthorpe site’s owners prior to government control, British Steel, had said that the coal from a planned mine in Cumbria would not have been suitable for their needs.)
More recently, right-leaning newspapers have used the furore around a report published by the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change (TBI) as a further opportunity to criticise Miliband.
Many publications misleadingly interpreted comments by Blair as a criticism of the Starmer government’s net-zero policies and, by association, Miliband himself. They described the energy secretary as an “eco-loon” compared to the “uncontroversial” advice from Blair.
Miliband the ‘fanatic’
The majority of the criticism of Miliband in newspaper editorials in 2025 has come from the Daily Mail, the Sun and the Daily Telegraph.
The Sun remains the most consistent critic of Miliband, with 26 editorials published in 2025 so far. There have only been 18 weeks in 2025 to date. As the chart below shows, this spate of 26 editorials from the Sun is already approaching last year’s record of 29.
The attacks levelled at Miliband by right-leaning newspapers are often both highly personal and somewhat melodramatic.
They frequently imply that his focus on net-zero policies is a sign of mental instability or quasi-religious devotion, rather than being part of his job title – or acknowledging that reaching net-zero emissions is the only way scientists say climate change can be prevented from getting worse.
The Sun has referred to Miliband’s “uncontrolled fanaticism”. The Sun on Sunday has described the “madness of Ed Miliband’s green crusade” and called him the “fanatical prophet of net-zero”.
Another editorial from the Sun stated that “Miliband is so blinded by eco-ideology that he’s lost touch with reality”, referring to his “eco insanity”.
In an editorial lamenting the state of the UK’s oil-and-gas industry, which shed 10s of 1,000s of jobs under the previous Conservative government, the Daily Mail mentioned:
“Energy secretary Ed Miliband’s messianic desire to sacrifice a multi-billion pound industry on the altar of net-zero.”
The newspapers also suggest that Miliband is unwilling to listen to any criticism. “Miliband has shown himself unprepared to countenance any suggestion that his efforts to decarbonise the grid within five years might be reckless,” the Daily Telegraph claimed.
There have also been frequent calls from newspaper editorials for Starmer to sack the energy secretary. In an article titled “Miliband’s madness”, published at the end of April, the Daily Mail asked:
“Isn’t it time Sir Keir Starmer accepted his colleague’s ideological net-zero fervour is damaging the government – and sacked him?”
Beyond the editorial pages, there has also been a constant stream of comment pieces, many by climate sceptics, which often go even further in their attacks on the energy secretary. “Miliband belongs in a padded cell,” Daily Mail columnist Richard Littlejohn wrote at the start of May.
This has come amid much media speculation from commentators on both the left and right that Starmer is considering firing Miliband.
However, Starmer has not given any indication of doing this.
On the contrary, at the recent energy security conference the UK government hosted in London, Starmer stated that he was fully committed to his government’s net-zero ambitions. “That is in the DNA of my government,” he stated in a widely covered speech.
The post Analysis: Attacks on Ed Miliband in UK newspaper editorials have already exceeded 2024 levels appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Analysis: Attacks on Ed Miliband in UK newspaper editorials have already exceeded 2024 levels
SUVA, FIJI, Tuesday 19 May 2026 – Pacific civil society groups are calling for transparency and inclusion in regional deep-sea mining talks, as environmental stewardship concerns and poor economic prospects accompany the corporate push.
This cautionary call comes on the first day of the International Seabed Authority (ISA)’s Pacific Small Island Developing States regional workshop, the so-called ‘Deep Seabed Sustainable Blue Growth Initiative’ in Suva, Fiji.
The Pacific Regional Non-Government Organisations (PRNGO) Alliance, including Pacific Conference of Churches (PCC), Fiji Council of Social Services (FCOSS), Pacific Network on Globalisation (PANG), Greenpeace Australia Pacific (GPAP), and over 20 Pacific civil society organisations, questioned the agenda of the “blue growth” forum, arguing that the workshop emphasises sponsoring States, but only includes observer engagement with other Pacific Small Island Developing States (PSIDS).
The collective stressed the importance of ensuring that the workshop does not unintentionally privilege or amplify only the perspectives of sponsoring States in a manner that could be perceived as legitimising or advancing deep-sea mining pathways in the Pacific.
Mr Joey Tau, Chair of the PRNGO Alliance, said: “We are extremely concerned that the current agenda is inappropriate to the Pacific context; as it stands, it clearly centres states that have an interest in deep-sea mining, with relations and benefits to the mining industry. Such regional workshops must ensure equal visibility and space for non-sponsoring States, particularly those advocating for precautionary approaches and environmental safeguards.
“We also challenge the ISA in its mandate to encourage policy discussions on effective protection of the marine environment and not just on the economics, exploration and exploitation.”
Ms Vani Catanasiga, Executive Director of the FCOSS, said: “The ISA came in to conduct a workshop, but they excluded civil society organisations. Why has that been allowed? The ISA is excluding a body of knowledge that is needed for concrete conversations that also takes into consideration the well-being of the Pacific people. This was not well thought through – this forum should have at least emphasised the importance of a civil society perspective. As we are aware, deep-sea mining will have transboundary harm; this is why it is important to have civil society in the room during these conversations.”
Reverend James Bhagwan, General-Secretary of PCC, said: “For Pacific peoples, there is nothing sustainable about deep-sea mining when it violates our cultural and spiritual connection to the ocean. The ocean is not an empty space. It is not simply a resource. It is our common home, our provider, our ancestor, our climate regulator, and part of God’s creation. In the Pacific, we have long said: the ocean is us, and we are the ocean. To mine the ocean is to wound the life-system that holds our peoples, our islands and future generations together.”
Ms Laisa Nainoka, Oceans Campaigner at PANG, said: “There is no such thing as sustainable deep-sea mining. Harm does not become harmless just because we rebrand it. It is fundamentally destructive, with far-reaching impacts on the ocean, marine life, and the communities that depend on them for survival. These impacts are not confined to the high seas or the exclusive economic zones of sponsoring states, it is felt across the entire ocean.”
Mr Rae Bainteiti, Political Coordinator at Greenpeace Australia Pacific, said: “Calling the destruction of our ocean floor ‘sustainable blue growth’ is deceptive, biased, and wrong – it is bluewashing the biggest modern threat to the Pacific. Deep-sea mining is a risky investment that will cost the Pacific the most and benefit us the least. The average Pacific Island State would only receive mere thousands of dollars through the ISA benefit-sharing regime as it stands, while international mining companies rake in billions. There is no Pacific ‘blue growth’ in a mined ocean. True blue growth should mean investing in healthy oceans, sustainable livelihoods, climate resilience, and protecting marine ecosystems, not opening the door to another extractive industry.”
Pacific civil society organisations have consistently emphasised that, rather than framing deep-sea mining as an opportunity for “blue growth,” the ISA should prioritise its environmental protection obligations.
At the forum this week, PRNGO is calling for the ISA to:
- Actively include civil society and community perspectives in workshops;
- Prevent pro-mining bias in deep-sea mining governance by shifting focus away from heavily invested Sponsoring States toward meaningful engagement with PSIDS;
- Give equal weight to dialogue about protecting nature, including the role of independent science, the application of the precautionary approach, and the consideration of cumulative mining impacts.
To date, 40 countries have called for a moratorium or precautionary pause on deep-sea mining, including seven Pacific nations.
– ENDS –
Pacific civil society cautions ISA of ‘bluewashing’ deep-sea mining
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