Ed Miliband has a rare knack for winding people up. Maybe it’s the sanctimonious tone, the misplaced certainty, the goofy conviction that his batty ideas are invariably correct.

Or perhaps it’s the memory of how he nicked the Labour leadership from his more electable older brother David, by sneakily using union backing.

I’d die of shame if I did that to a sibling.

Instead, Miliband died at the hands of the electorate, after getting up their noses during the 2015 general election too.

If you’re going to stiff your brother, you’d better go on to win. Instead, Miliband led Labour to one of its worst defeats in modern history.

Yet here he is, a key figure in Keir Starmer‘s Labour cabinet, and still convinced he’s right about everything, in the face of all the evidence.

Miliband prevented Britain and the US from taking military action against murderous Syrian President Bashar Assad. He still claims he made t he right call.

He rewrote Labour’s leadership rules, opening the door not just once but twice for Jeremy Corbyn to have a shot at becoming PM.

Only the electorate saved us. Again.

Now Miliband is busy wiping billions off the UK economy by banning all new North Sea oil and gas drilling. His relentless net zero crusade will leave Britain poorer and at risk of blackouts.

Labour-backing unions hate it, Labour MPs hate it, voters hate it, but he doesn’t seem to care.

But no matter how much he annoys you, he annoys former Labour PM Tony Blair a lot more.

Sir Tony has publicly criticised Miliband’s climate policy, warning it’s based on “inconvenient facts” that voters are no longer buying.

In a damning intervention, he said Miliband’s approach is “doomed to fail” because voters are “being asked to make sacrifices for virtually no impact”.

Their feud runs deep.

Blair has never forgiven Miliband for backing former Labour Chancellor Gordon Brown in their long-running Downing Street soap opera.

Miliband was firmly in the Brownite camp, in yet another example of his disastrous political instincts.

He repeatedly pushed Blair to name the day and step aside, so the gloriously unelectable Brown could take over.

Once in power, Brown blew it, of course. Everything Miliband touches blows up.

Blair has his faults. But he did win three general elections. Brown and Miliband combined couldn’t manage one.

Blair wanted David Miliband as leader, a choice that might have kept Labour on the centrist ground necessary for victory.

Instead, Ed dragged the party leftwards, and Blair warned the result would be a traditional Labour defeat. Blair was right then. Now he’s being proved right again now.

Miliband’s net zero obsession is costly, unpopular and electoral suicide. It won’t save the planet either. Mostly, we export our emissions overseas, while spending a fortune on imported energy.

Tony Blair’s decision to publicly challenge it caused maximum disruption for Labour just as crucial elections loom. He’s now been forced to tone it down.

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Party members aren’t thanking him for it. Many have never forgiven him for making Labour electable, something Miliband will never achieve.

Blair lives on this planet. Miliband doesn’t. Which makes it all the stranger that he’s trying so hard to save it.

Labour’s internal contradictions are bursting into view once again.

Blair and Brown tore the party in two with their ego wars. Now Miliband and Blair are doing the same.

And once again, it’s the country that stands to lose.