Smear of the Week: At ‘anti-woke Davos,’ Ed Miliband becomes public enemy No.1
God only knows what they’ll cook up if Ed does make it to No. 11!
That weird gathering of right-wing activists and thought leaders who aim to “re-lay the foundations of our civilisation” returned to London this week.
The Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) conference, aka the ‘anti-woke Davos,’ brought together a familiar coalition of transatlantic conservatives, libertarians, culture warriors, and climate sceptics. The agenda featured the usual catalogue of right-wing grievances: opposition to multiculturalism, attacks on abortion rights, hostility towards environmental policies, and repeated warnings about the supposed dangers of ‘woke’ ideology.
The cast list was equally predictable. Kemi Badenoch, Nigel Farage, and even Boris Johnson, all made appearances at the conference founded by psychologist and conservative commentator Jordan Peterson. Both Badenoch and Farage back scrapping the UK’s landmark Climate Change Act and expanding North Sea oil and gas extraction.
Climate denial and opposition to Net Zero have long been central themes at ARC. The conference, which DeSmog revealed last week receives backing from oil and gas investors as well as donors to Donald Trump’s Republican Party, has become an influential forum for anti-climate policy arguments.
This year, however, one target stood above all others: energy secretary Ed Miliband.
Appearing via video link, Trump’s energy secretary Chris Wright, a millionaire former oil and gas executive, downplayed the risks of global warming, as Europe battles record-breaking and deadly heatwaves. Referring to excess deaths linked to soaring energy prices following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Wright argued: “Always more people die in the winter than die in summer, because cold is a vastly larger killer than heat is.”
He urged Britain to “change course,” embrace fossil fuels, and characterised climate change as a “slow-moving phenomenon” that would ultimately be solved through technological innovation.
Badenoch didn’t mince her words either. Speaking to ARC co-founder and Conservative peer Philippa Stroud, she identified what she described as the chief culprit behind Britain’s economic woes.
“There has been a villain in Britain’s deindustrialisation,” she declared. “His name is Ed Miliband, and he has made our country poorer.”
The audience applauded.
Amid speculation that Miliband could be made Andy Burnham’s chancellor, Badenoch doubled down: “We need to make sure that this man should not be let anywhere near the levers of power, not the energy department or anywhere else.”
Yet these attacks are anything but surprising. For the British right, Miliband has become the personification of Net Zero itself. He is routinely portrayed as an “economic vandal” supposedly intent on destroying Britain’s industrial base and “killing off” North Sea oil and gas.
Earlier this year, Sun columnist Ross Clark, who has built a career questioning climate science and attacking environmental activism, warned a “Net Zero nut could replace Starmer.” Clark, who has previously dismissed Greta Thunberg as a “well-crafted piece of PR” and branded Extinction Rebellion a “wannabe Marxist revolution in disguise,” even compared Miliband to Japanese knotweed.
But such hostility reflects more than partisan politics. Analysis by DeSmog and Greenpeace’s Unearthed has shown that ARC’s donor network includes several figures and companies with fossil fuel interests and close ties to Donald Trump’s circle.
Among them is Australian-born billionaire Anthony Pratt, who reportedly donated $14 million to the pro-Trump Make America Great Again Super PAC and a further $1.1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund. Other backers include the American fossil fuel firms Howard Energy Partners (HEP) and Heyco Energy Group, both of which also helped fund last year’s conference. HEP is one of the largest energy infrastructure companies in the United States, and its chief executive, Mike Howard, was appointed to Trump’s National Petroleum Council earlier this year.
ARC’s relentless focus on Miliband is therefore depressingly expected. For a movement defined by opposition to climate action, Britain’s most prominent advocate of Net Zero is not merely a political opponent. He has become a symbol of everything the anti-woke, anti-climate coalition believes it’s fighting against.
God only knows what they’ll cook up if Ed does make it to No. 11!
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