Old Socialist comments.
As a preface to my comment:
The Reader, as always, confronts the Stalinist Erasure of 2016: after the resignation of David Cameron precipitated by the Brexit vote, the rise of Mrs. May, the defamation of Jeremy Corbyn by the whole of respectable British Political Class, from The Times to the ‘Left’ Guardian, to reduce it drastically… Not forgetting the rise of the political buffoon Boris Johnson, then Liz Truss and the redoubtable Kwasi Kwarteng, ending with kleptocratic Rishi Sunak. That Political History is carefully avoided by Mr. Colvile: that trades upon that convenient political mythology, that what the reader and writer hold dear, in sum, that British Politics are ‘normal’ rather than completely collapsed in that conveniently manufactured Stalinist Erasure.
Headline: The Ulez lesson: voters like eco policies, as long as they cost net zero
The New Labour Party, that is under discussion, is the product of the bad faith of a whole political class, led by Thatcherite Colvile. He begins his political melodrama here:
It’s hard to feel sorry for Sadiq Khan. In a crowded field he is perhaps the most excruciatingly annoying politician in modern Britain. But I did feel just a twinge of sympathy over the speed and brutality with which Sir Keir Starmer chucked the mayor of London under a bright red double-decker bus after the Uxbridge by-election.
Labour lost because of Ulez, the ultra-low emisssion zone. Ulez was Khan’s policy. So Khan should think again. After all, said Starmer, “we are doing something very wrong if policies put forward by the Labour Party end up on each and every Tory leaflet”.
It’s certainly true that — as some of us predicted — Ulez has become hugely toxic, to the point that even Labour’s own candidate in Uxbridge distanced himself from it. But there’s something more complicated going on here than just Khan being monstrously tin-eared.
Britain’s air is too dirty, especially in its cities. That’s true not just generally but legally: there is a large volume of British and European regulation setting limits and targets for pollutants, and the courts have made clear they are to be taken seriously.
Note that Colvile presents this as a battle between Khan and Tony Blair’s political catamite Starmer. What might a Thatcherite profit from a presented battle two New Labour stalwarts?
So why the backlash? The weird thing is that Ulez ought to be popular. The think tank I run, the Centre for Policy Studies, recently produced a report on the future of driving, including a detailed study of clean air zones. Polling for the project by BMG Research found that 79 per cent of voters were concerned about air quality, including 83 per cent of Tory voters. Some 52 per cent of the public had specific concerns about air quality in their local area, and 64 per cent said politicians had done too little about it. We also found good evidence that the original, smaller Ulez had done its job, with the number of non-compliant vehicles on the roads falling sharply.
Yet we also found — and warned — that the expansion of Ulez to cover the whole of Greater London was turning into a case study of how not to do it, so much so that it risked discrediting the whole idea.
Thatcherite Mr. Colvile speaks for the ‘Low-income families’?
Ulez expansion, by contrast, felt like a cash grab. Low-income families were being told they would have to pay £12.50 a day to drive to work or pop to the shops. The money for replacement cars was both inadequate (£2,000) and late. The whole thing was rushed in without allowing time for families to adapt — in the middle of a cost of living crisis that was already hammering those same families’ incomes. And the mayor appeared mostly deaf to their complaints, apart from whining about central government and demanding more funding (perhaps if he cut his PR budget …).
Mr. Colvile then speaks of :
Since the Uxbridge result there have been loud voices arguing — especially from the right — that both Labour and the Tories need to rethink not just Ulez but the whole net-zero agenda, just as the Chesham and Amersham by-election loss in 2021 led Boris Johnson to junk his planning reforms.
The above paragraph operates under another political fiction that Colvile is capable of the politically self-serving, in the guise of presenting both sides, on the question?
Has The Reader lost patience with Colevile, yet? I’ll present some telling remainders of his argument:
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We also have a particular problem in the UK of policymaking that is essentially declaratory, based on setting high-level targets and then puzzling through the actual ramifications later.
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Take net zero itself, which was waved through into law essentially as a goodbye gift from the Tory party to Theresa May, with no real detail or scrutiny of what it would take to actually get there.
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(Editor: note the resort to Political Moralizing via ‘if we go with the grain of human nature’ !)
Whenever I write about the net-zero emissions policy, I make the point that it will work only if we go with the grain of human nature. That means focusing on incentives and innovation. People will accept swapping petrol cars for electric vehicles, or a gas boiler for a heat pump, when and only when it is cheaper or more convenient for them personally.
Governments can tilt the balance via grants and incentives — or indeed by actually getting that charging infrastructure built — but if they try to force the issue, they will come a cropper.
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Uxbridge and Ulez don’t mark the death of net zero, or even of air quality campaigns — not least because those legal standards and obligations are firmly in place.
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( Editor: Thatcherites are constitutionally incapable of something resembling: ‘on those voters who could least afford it, in the midst of the worst cost of living crisis for a generation.’ )
Khan’s stroke of genius was to place the full burden of meeting his targets on those voters who could least afford it, in the midst of the worst cost of living crisis for a generation. No wonder they turned the air blue.
Old Socialist
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