The Energy Secretary doesn’t engage with the substance. He dismisses criticism as a plot by the right-wing press, or greedy oil companies, who are smearing him with “nonsense and lies”. And it’s true that some attacks stray into the personal. That’s politics. But Miliband should answer with facts. He doesn’t.

Instead, he makes grand, sweeping claims about the success of his policies, while ignoring hard facts on the ground. He says covering Britain with wind turbines and solar panels, while blocking new oil and gas exploration, will cut bills and boost energy security. That flies in the face of all the evidence. Now he’s been challenged by someone who can’t be brushed off as a right-wing crank, who’s just damned his net zero charge as “not fit for purpose”.

No, it’s not Nigel Farage. Or Tory shadow energy secretary Claire Coutinho. It’s former Labour PM Sir Tony Blair. Who knows exactly what Miliband is like. Today, his think tank, the Tony Blair Institute, has torn into Miliband, and not for the first time. It’s published a report arguing that Labour should junk Miliband’s green energy strategy to focus on what really matters, making energy cheaper.

The report confirms that Miliband’s accelerated renewables will drive up electricity prices and hollow out industry, while doing little to slow climate change. It means squandering £1.5 billion a year paying wind farms to switch off when supply outstrips demand. The conclusion is blunt: “In a country responsible for less than 1% of global emissions, that is not climate leadership – it is climate theatre.”

Crucially, the think tank calls on Miliband to scrap the 38% windfall tax on oil and gas and lift the ban on new North Sea drilling licences. By doing that, the UK could produce 7.5billion barrels and add £165billion to the economy. Even ambitious net zero scenarios require oil and gas beyond 2050. Miliband doesn’t care. Instead of producing energy, we’ll import it at huge cost, and with higher emissions.

The report says that unless Miliband relents, our energy bills will only rise. Miliband doesn’t care. He won’t even engage. He’ll just rant on about right-wingers and continue with a childish policy that may cost the nation hundreds of billions of pounds.

That’s why he draws such fire. His blank refusal to face economic reality drives people mad. I’m a moderate chap myself, but sometimes he drives me to the brink of frothing fury, as in this article. Watch him speak, punching the air and rolling his eyes, and it’s hard to dispute he’s deluded. His policies certainly are. That’s not me saying that. The exact word has been used by the UK’s leading energy expert.

Professor Dieter Helm of Oxford says aspects of Miliband’s 2030 electricity decarbonisation target is based on a “delusion”. The accelerated timetable ignores practical constraints and removes the full costs of renewables from calculations. Instead of cutting bills, Helm warns it could lock us into higher costs for years.

Miliband didn’t listen then, and he’s not listening today. Instead, his spokesperson responded to Blair’s attack by once again claiming that his self-proclaimed “clean power mission” is the only way to cut bills, deliver energy security and create thousands of jobs.

That’s nonsense. It’ll drive up bills, costs us hundreds of billions, and leave the UK hooked on Chinese tech while destroying tens of thousands of existing oil and gas sector jobs, and creating hardly any green ones.

Miliband’s net zero charge is deluded and not fit for purpose. That isn’t a fringe view or right-wing conspiracy. It’s common sense. Which Miliband simply doesn’t have.