Everyone is asking “Where’s Ed?” this morning after shadow Wales minister Jo Stevens was tasked with talking up Labour’s “Great British Energy” nationalised plans instead of the party’s green spokesman shadow cabinet minister. Rumour has it Starmer’s team has forced Ed into hiding…

On Thursday last week Miliband visited Morecambe and decided to snub the two nuclear power stations, the area’s largest employers, turning up instead to struggling engineering firm Balltec. The firm provides its services to, you guessed it, oil and gas firms. Balltec boasts that it provides “unrivalled engineering products and experience in the global oil & gas sector” and most recently worked for BP on large-scale oil extraction projects in the Gulf of Mexico. Is LOTO playing an extended prank on green Ed?

Guido had a spare moment today to listen to the “Cheerful Chatteroo” podcast with Ed Miliband and Geoff Lloyd today. To be fair, this was a surpringly entertaining episode.

In the above excerpt they discuss how celebrity endorsements influence decisions of swing voters in elections, asking whether they can think of any historical instances of this happening in the UK, as well as personally for Miliband. Ed scratched his head as Geoff unsuccessfully encouraged him to search for an example. Guido can think of one…

Cast your mind back to 10 days before the 2015 election, when Ed went around to Russell Brand’s flat and appeared on his YouTube channel where Brand gave his endorsement to the former Labour leader and the Guardian’s Owen Jones famously said the Tories should be afraid. Maybe Ed has suppressed the memory…

When James O’Brien asked Keir to elaborate on his statement today that “we’d lost our way…not just under Jeremy Corbyn, but for a while” he asked the opposition leader if he had “run this by Ed Miliband” before the speech. Poor Ed’s been a little at odds with the party leadership recently…

Starmer took a bit of time to lay out his response: “No, and I’m not having a go at Ed by any shape or means, he’s a very good colleague got a, he’s one of the central mission drivers… But I mean, I don’t, I don’t want to ignore the fact that we’ve lost four elections in a row and pretending that it was just one dark winter night, four years ago today, I don’t think is realistic“. Don’t just blame Corbyn, dish some out to Ed as well…

There’s been some confusion over what exactly Labour’s £28 billion-a-year borrowing plan is, and when the target will be achieved as the time-table changes depending who in the Shadow Cabinet is talking and to whom. During a Q&A at an event at the billionaire Lord Sainsbury funded think-tank, the Centre for Progressive Policy, Ed Miliband was asked whether he denies the claim that the £28 billion would be “watered down“. Miliband retorted that the party “was very clear” that the £28 billion-every-year target would be hit in the second half of the next parliament under a Labour government, claiming the party’s position hasn’t changed since Rachel Reeves’s revised announcement of the policy in June. At the time, she also said she took the decision to scale back the Green Prosperity Plan as a result of the poor state of the economy.

Of late we have seen a Shadow minister claim that the policy may not happen until a second term Labour government. The question referred to a senior Labour source briefing the BBC suggesting the target may never be reached. Miliband derided the media coverage of the plans, saying, “I’m old enough to know you don’t believe everything you read in the newspapers or online.” The media has simply been reporting what their Labour Party sources tell them. Does he mean don’t believe what his party says?

After yesterday’s announcement that the government would issue hundreds of new oil and gas licences in the North Sea, Guido wasn’t surprised to see outrage from Just Stop Oil and their political wing. Ed Miliband was quick out the gates: he slammed the “weak and confused policy” and promised a “phased and responsible transition in the North Sea”. In the same press release the Labour Party warned of the “dangers” of prioritising new oil and gas, warning that it would contribute to “climate disaster”. You would think reversing this “failed” policy would be the priority of any incoming Labour administration…

Yet, once again, Labour couldn’t back up their words were action. On Newsnight yesterday, Thangam Debbonaire was asked if a Labour administration would revoke the new licences. Thangam couldn’t commit to reversing the policy, only going as far as to say:

“We will grant no new licences”.

As Kirsty Wark put it, this leaves Labour pursuing “exactly the same strategy” as the government. The very same “weak and confused” strategy supposedly contributing to “climate disaster”…