Where is Ed Miliband?

It’s a busy day for the Labour lot, what with Rachel Reeves’s big growth speech this morning and Sir Keir Starmer’s PMQs at noon. But as viewers tuned in to watch the back-and-forth play out between the Prime Minister and Tory leader Kemi Badenoch, there was one rather notable absence on the Labour benches. Energy Secretary Ed Miliband was nowhere to be seen.

In fact, PMQs isn’t the only thing the Energy Secretary chose to skip today. Miliband decided not grace the Chancellor with his presence during her address this morning where she formally backed plans to build a third runway at Heathrow Airport – proposals that Ed had previously threatened to resign over under Gordon Brown. In fact, the now-Energy Secretary has spoken out against expansion plans multiple times and was one of the MPs to vote against them in 2018. How very interesting…

Just days ago Miliband was adamant that he would not resign if the plans are given the green light this time around, insisting – as Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds did on the airwaves this morning – that the Labour government can meet both its environmental and growth missions together.