What a pair Ed Miliband and California governor Gavin Newsom make. Both seem to suffer from the delusion that they are national leaders, meeting up in London on Monday to sign a deal in which they aim to share green technology and finance. Both are committed to what they like to call a ‘global race for clean power’. And both are presiding over electricity grids which are heading for disaster.

In this, California is a little ahead even of Britain. It provides a frightening picture of what is to come as Miliband tries to decarbonise the grid, mostly with intermittent renewables, by 2030. On Christmas Day, 130,000 homes and businesses in and around San Francisco found themselves without power. This was just the latest in a series of blackouts in recent years which have paralysed parts of the state. Newsom invariably likes to blame the loss of power on climate change. The Christmas Day blackout was precipitated by a storm, while previous mass outages in 2020 and 2022 were blamed on heatwaves.

I fear that what Miliband will pick up from Newsom is how to make excuses

I fear that what Miliband will pick up........

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