By QUENTIN LETTS FOR THE DAILY MAIL
Published: 20:14 EDT, 20 March 2025 | Updated: 20:14 EDT, 20 March 2025
A couple of days after Nasa’s stranded astronauts returned to Earth it fell to Lucy Powell, Leader of the Commons, to make an allusion to space travel.
Ms Powell had turned her great brain to Kemi Badenoch’s speech expressing scepticism about Net Zero. Ms Powell, unimpressed, jeered: ‘We saw the leader of the Opposition go to a whole other planet this week. Planet Zog, maybe.’
That was not the end of her stellar attack. Ms Powell surmised that Mrs Badenoch’s distancing of her Tory party from the Olympian wisdom of Ed Miliband, the great Net Zeroist and Secretary of State for Energy, was ‘a completely mad thing to do’. Prof Powell (a professorship seems the least we can bestow on such an authority on science and psephology) was tickled by her own remarks. She bared her impressive gnashers, peeling back her lips like a winner in the parade ring at Aintree.
Some Labour loyalists rewarded the professor with tinkling laughter. More contemplative Government backbenchers kept quiet. Did they feel Ms Powell was being a little Zoggist?
Talking of which, how do we know that the inhabitants of the Planet Zog are not green? I mean, really green. Like Martians.
Back to Westminster. The default setting of the elite at present is that Mrs Badenoch has let the side down by breaking the ‘Net Zero consensus’. This appears to be Sir Keir Starmer’s public position.
It is, however, not impossible there are some figures at 10 Downing Street who feel that if anyone is ‘completely mad’ in relation to Net Zero it is more likely to be Mr Miliband and his groupies, of whom Ms Powell is one.
To be Leader of the Commons was once a fine thing. Occupants of this high office tended to be political old-timers who had seen an orbit or two of fortune’s star. The first Leader I watched from the press gallery was John Wakeham, soon followed by Sir Geoffrey Howe.
A couple of days after Nasa ’s stranded astronauts returned to Earth it fell to Lucy Powell, Leader of the Commons, to make an allusion to space travel
The default setting of the elite at present is that Mrs Badenoch has let the side down by breaking the ‘Net Zero consensus’
At Energy questions this week Mr Miliband himself claimed to be much amused by Mrs Badenoch’s speech
When New Labour arrived we had senior professionals such as Ann Taylor, Margaret Beckett, Robin Cook, Jack Straw. The Coalition years brought Sir George Young Bt., William Hague and, er, Chris Grayling, among others.
It is not easy to imagine many of them accusing a leader of the Opposition of hailing from the Planet Zog or being ‘completely mad’ for taking a policy-position with which many voters agree.
Nor would many of those Leaders of the Commons have been rash enough to ally themselves with so uncertain a prospect as Mr Miliband. If Ed Mil were zapped, how long would Lucy Powell last in Cabinet?
Ms Powell was speaking at Commons business questions in response to the Hexham Mumbler, Joe Morris (Lab), a furtive and ill-shaven lad. Heaven knows how a tidy Northumberland town such as Hexham ended up with such a scruffy galoot for its MP. Mr Morris suggested that ‘moderate Conservatives should do some soul-searching and put planet before party’. In other words, everyone should support Mr Miliband. So said Hexham.
At Energy questions this week Mr Miliband himself claimed to be much amused by Mrs Badenoch’s speech.
Following a question from the Lib Dems (who have also been hooting at the Conservatives’ Net Zero scepticism), Mr Miliband roared with merriment and said: ‘The Opposition are off to the Wacky Races when it comes to Net Zero.’ Labour MPs sitting behind him were not uniformly impressed. Mr Miliband may have been expecting his Wacky Races retort to earn laughter from his troops. It did not come. He sat down to a slightly sticky silence.
Is the parliamentary Labour party starting to sense that Net Zero, and Mr Miliband, could be trouble?
Meanwhile an inter-galactic colleague reports that the legislature of Planet Zog debated a proposal for ruinous, unilateral climate policies. A minister for the government scoffed at the idea, saying its supporters had ‘plainly been to the Planet Miliband’.
Zog MPs thought this a tremendous joke and honked like those aliens in the old Smash advert.