Meanwhile, the other day Norwegians awoke not to pastries so sticky that it’s hard to know from which direction to eat them, (although I’m sure they know exactly how to approach), but to the discovery that some self-important British MP had announced they live in a petrostate. 

A petrostate is a country whose economy is heavily reliant on the extraction and export of oil or natural gas, as though that’s a bad thing. Besides, Norway has a diverse range of industries, including seafood, forestry, and mining.

It might not have sounded so bad had he not also aligned Norway with dictatorships. The last time Norway had flirted with anything approaching a dictatorship was with the Kalmar Union in 1397, which really involved nothing but some civil agreements over salted sardines and a rather lurid flag of red and yellow that even Mauritius might find distasteful. Mind you, the Kalmar Union, which sounds more like more excuse for regular afternoon teas than a functioning empire, probably meets Ed Miliband’s liberal criteria for dictators.

Miliband increasingly makes announcements apparently fuelled by painful indigestion rather than actual facts. He said bills were rising “because we’re so reliant on fossil fuels, in particular gas… and the markets that determine the price of those fossil fuels are controlled by the decisions of petrostates and dictators”. In his favourite gaslighting mode of communication, he misdirects attention away from where the game really lies, which is in his evangelical dogmatic commitment to Net Zero, while the rest of the world he’s modelling it for laughs, and continues to build economies on cheap coal and self sufficiency, rather than emulating his example.

As Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, Miliband’s juggling of energy security and climate change is impossible; if he was Defence Secretary he’d be claiming national security while arguing for bang! flags to drop from the muzzles of the guns. Appointing himself as secretary for climate change is like declaring himself secretary for the weather, although more on that shortly. He’s correct about one thing though, the reason we are reliant of fossil fuels is because they are reliable. To his credit he’s also right about increasing UK electricity bills to the highest in the world. And yes, on his watch. According to Ofgem data, electricity bills for an average household in the UK have increased by 35.5%, from £652 in 2021 to £884 in 2024, according to Ofgem data. Watching Labour argue that when they promised to reduce electricity bills by £300 per year they meant at some indeterminate point in the future, rather than at any time which might be useful to businesses and private customers requires admiration for their ability to obfuscate.

The petrostates and dictators that Miliband refers to are the three major sources of natural gas imports into the UK that keep the country running when there’s no wind or sun. 60% of our piped gas comes from Norway, which they drill from the same North Sea that Labour has shut down and refused fresh licences for UK companies. presumably the gas the Norwegians pull out is more Net Zero compliant than ours, even after the cost of exporting it to the UK; this is paying a farmer for potatoes grown on your land for twice the price it might cost to farm yourself. The next two petrostate and dictatorships are the USA (26%) and Qatar (6%). We’re aware that to most lefties the US is now a dictatorship albeit without the banners hanging along boulevards, dissenters arrests and night curfews, even if it remains a democracy, but hearing the buffoonery from Miliband is laughable. Denmark should be pursuing him through the courts for slander, or simply turn off the gas.

These dictatorships in Miliband’s head sound ominous, but at least they’re not dimming the sun. The latest twist in the UK government’s twisted pursuit for UK Net Zero is to block the sun. It sounds like a particularly rambunctious Danger Mouse episode, but UK scientists at ARIA (Advanced Research and Invention Agency) are to launch outdoor geo-engineering experiments as part of a £50m government-funded programme. It confirms what many (the ones mocked as conspiracy theorists) have already been observing for years – the cross-hatching of chemical trails soon followed by a low chemical haze that lingers for days on end. Plenty of US states are already banning the spraying of reflective particles such as bromium, aluminium and strontium into the atmosphere to block sunlight reaching the Earth’s surface.

Apparently ARIA is an agency built to unlock scientific and technological breakthroughs that benefit everyone. Everyone apart from the sane. Because if we’re so worried about the negative impacts of manmade climate change then why are we now investing money in, erm, manmade climate change. Messing with natural phenomena has been historically explored during the first ten minutes of dystopian science fiction movies in which families lie huddled together in basements of tinned food scared witless. And regardless as to your view on Lee Anderson from Reform, seeing Miliband laughing as he refuses to answer his question on the wisdom of blocking out the sun reveals the only dictator we need to fear is Miliband himself.