ULEZ is the acronym on everyone’s lips today following the Conservatives unexpected – outside of ConservativeHome, naturally – squeaking home in Uxbridge and South Ruislip last night. Angela Rayner has herself said Sadiq Khan has not listened to the voters in his ongoing efforts to make around 10 per cent of Greater London drivers pay £12.50 per day to drive their aging diesel and petrol cars.
For long-time critics of Khan’s expansion plans, this is an obvious moment of satisfaction. But Tories crowing today over the unpopularity of the London Mayor’s scheme should pause for thought. Clearly, voters who say they support green policies in the abstract are less willing to do so when actually asked to pay. But it is the Tories who are currently asking voters to stump up the most for Johnny Polar Bear.
The target for ‘Net Zero’ emissions by 2050 was introduced in the dying days of Theresa May’s government. She also gave us the ban on the sale of new diesel or petrol and hybrid cars, which Boris Johnson’s government then brought forwards to 2030 and 2035 respectively. There is also the ban on the sale of new boilers by 2025, requiring the installation of heat pumps at around £10,000 a pop.
All these changes are going to be vastly more expensive than driving your aging Volkswagen Passat from Rickmansworth to Neasden. If Uxbridge and South Ruislip is a straw in the wind, then these policies are going to be toxic in suburbia. Hence why Craig Mackinlay, David Frost, and John Redwood are amongst those urging the Government to over-turn its vehicle and heat pump deadlines.
But something that might well be apparent to the constituency’s ex-MP (if he isn’t smarting too much over whether he could have stood again for his old seat and won) is that the Tories can continue to have their cake and eat it. As with spending cuts that Jeremy Hunt has cannily priced in for past the next election, it is Labour that looks set – based on Selby and Ainsty – with the tough choices.
Unlike Rishi Sunak, Keir Starmer has contained the transition to clean energy in one of his aspirations for government. Although the influence of the Conservative Environment Network (and the concomitant aspiration of eager backbenchers to write Net Zero articles) has grown like Japanese knotweed in recent years, the Ed Miliband-shaped spectre of greenery looms larger over Labour.
Rachel Reeves may have managed to water down the party’s commitment to spending £28 billion a year on green energy. But Keir Starmer still has a pledge to bring about clean electricity by 2030, has shown no sign of wanting to reverse course on the Government’s current Net Zero targets, and has ummed and erred over the wisdom of Khan’s ULEZ expansion over the last two weeks.
In Starmer’s relentless pursuit of government, will Labour’s commitment to various green policies drop away as easily as has his previous fondness for nationalisation, Jeremy Corbyn, and women having penises? Or in office would he be forced into a series of u-turns as commitments come into force, and the voter backlash emerges?
Or will Sunak have beaten them to it? If the Prime Minister is either aiming to do anything to win next year, or if he will follow my advice to commit his premiership to telling the voters what they need to do, then facing a few hard truths about our Net Zero commitments will be unavoidable. What happened to Sadiq Khan last night could happen to the Tories next year.
Perhaps the more likely outcome, as our Editor suggested two years ago, is that we will persist with the slightly cynical tendency that underlies the whole Net Zero debate. Both parties might step back from the zeal they have so far shown from going green. Some form of target will persist. And whether we hit it or not, we will all pat ourselves on the back for trying our best.