Ed Miliband is the costliest politician in British history

When Ed Miliband won the Labour leadership, the commentators overlooked his most startling achievement, says Christopher Booker(Telegraph)
"Signally missing from all the attempts to find any substance in the strangely two-dimensional figure who is now leader of the Labour Party has been any reference to Ed Miliband's most spectacular achievement – the fact that he is potentially the most expensive politician in Britain's history,

The only real contribution David Miliband's little brother has so far made to our lives in his meteoric political career was to put through the 2008 Climate Change Act. This commits Britain, uniquely in the world, to cutting its CO2 emissions by 80 per cent by 2050, at a cost estimated, on the website of his old Department for Energy and Climate Change, at up to £18.3 billion every year for the next four decades. In cash terms this amounts to £734 billion, making it far and away the most costly law ever put through Parliament. It will equate to more than £700 a year for every household in the land, as we pay for thousands more useless windmills and other quixotic gestures through fast-rising taxes, soaring electricity bills, draconian regulatory costs and heaven knows what else. Furthermore, neither Mr Miliband himself, nor any of his Act's supporters, could begin to explain how that 80 per cent target is to be attained without closing down virtually our entire economy."