Ed Miliband was on to something with the big six, but nobody will admit it

SSE's energy price pledge proves it is the fate of opposition leaders to see their ideas mocked, then pinched without credit

You wouldn't know it from reading the Ed Miliband-abusing headlines but since the papers were printed, one of Britain's big six energy companies has embraced a version of the price freeze that the same papers and David Cameron abused the Labour leader for after he promised one last autumn.

SSE's promise to keep or reduce its retail prices to 7 million customers until 2016 comes with a price tag that includes 500 voluntary redundancies and may be a pre-emptive strike ahead of a critical view of the way Britain's energy cartel does its lucrative business. But even its decision to split its retail and wholesale divisions in the interests of transparency smacks of the Miliband agenda.