There is a football lesson that Ed Miliband, a lifelong Leeds United supporter, should know better than most.
In 1974, Brian Clough arrived at Elland Road as one of the brightest managers in Britain. He had confidence, conviction and a grand plan. But he also made one fatal mistake by immediately picking a fight with the very players he needed to succeed.
He criticised Leeds’ achievements under Don Revie, alienated senior figures, lost trust and lasted just 44 days. His spectacular collapse became the stuff of legend, immortalised on the big screen in The Damned United.
Half a century later, Miliband risks his own damned disaster – not in football, but in energy policy.
Because Britain’s Energy Secretary has spent too much of his time treating the oil and gas sector as the enemy rather than the partner it must be. He talks as if there is a binary choice between renewables and North Sea oil and gas, framing the future as a battle in which one side must defeat the other.
That is not leadership. It is ideology. And just as Clough discovered, if you lose the dressing room, the project fails.
The stakes, however, are infinitely higher than football. If Mr Miliband gets this wrong, it will not be a bruised ego or a relegation battle. It will be livelihoods destroyed, communities hollowed out and Britain left more exposed in a dangerous world.
The central flaw in the current approach is simple - the transition is being treated as an act of replacement rather than an act of management.
No serious person disputes the growth of renewable energy. Offshore wind, solar, hydrogen, carbon capture and new technologies all have a major role to play. But Britain still relies heavily on oil and gas today, and will still rely on it for decades to come.
The real question is not whether we use oil and gas during the transition, but whether we produce more of it ourselves under some of the highest environmental standards in the world – or import more from overseas with fewer jobs, less tax revenue and higher emissions.
Achieving a balanced strategy should not be a difficult call, yet North Sea investment has been crippled by the Energy Profits Levy and a headline tax rate of 78%. Projects are being delayed and jobs are vanishing. And for what?
The government already has a better answer sitting on the shelf - the Oil and Gas Price Mechanism, a permanent and responsive windfall tax system that rises when prices spike and eases when they fall. That would give the Treasury revenue when genuinely exceptional profits occur, while giving investors the certainty needed to unlock £17.5 billion of near-term investment into Britain.
Mr Miliband often argues that North Sea production does nothing to lower bills because energy prices are set internationally. It sounds neat but like his comments on BP this week, it is also misleading.
Domestic gas is cheaper than imported liquefied natural gas. It does not need to be supercooled, shipped halfway across the world, insured through volatile sea lanes, regasified at import terminals and exposed to geopolitical shocks. It comes through existing infrastructure directly into the UK system.
Homegrown supply cannot insulate us from every market movement, but it can reduce costs, improve resilience and strengthen security. Pretending otherwise insults the public’s intelligence.
Then there is the jobs question – the issue ministers most like to gloss over. For years, workers were promised a “just transition” in which old industries would give way to abundant new opportunities. But where are those jobs at the scale required?
Recent ONS figures showed renewables jobs in Scotland are actually falling, which is not argument against renewables, but it is an argument for realism. You cannot shut down one industrial base before the next one is ready.
That is why this false war between renewables and oil and gas is so destructive. It ignores how the real economy works.
Mr Miliband should also reflect on tone.
When he attacks energy firms for making profits globally, he may think he is landing blows on corporate excess. But workers hear something else. They hear contempt for the industry that feeds their families.
That is how you lose the dressing room. And if you lose the dressing room, even the best strategy on paper collapses on the pitch.
Britain needs an Energy Secretary who can unite competing interests behind a credible national plan. One who understands that security, affordability, decarbonisation and jobs are not rival objectives but interconnected ones. One who can say yes to renewables and yes to responsible domestic production from fields like Rosebank and Jackdaw.
The transition can still succeed. But it will only succeed if those asked to deliver it are brought with us.
Brian Clough learned too late that talent and conviction are worthless if nobody wants to play for you. Ed Miliband still has time to learn the same lesson.
Russell Borthwick is Chief Executive at Aberdeen & Grampian Chamber of Commerce, a business group with more than 1,350 member companies across Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire.