Peter Franklin is an Associate Editor of UnHerd.
Narrow by-election victories matter. When Labour held on to Batley and Spen by 323 votes it saved Keir Starmer’s job. The 495 vote Conservative majority in Uxbridge last week is equally significant. What had been billed as a night of unalloyed disaster for Rishi Sunak has turned into a very different story.
Yes, the other by-election results were dreadful, but it’s the fall-out from Uxbridge that’s still making headlines. In large part, that’s because there’s an identifiable cause for the upset: Sadiq Khan’s plan to extend the Ultra Low Emissions Zone (ULEZ).
It wasn’t the only factor, of course. For instance, the swing against Labour among Indian-heritage voters — as seen in other parts of London and in Leicester — has been over-looked. Nevertheless, there’s little doubt that a voter rebellion against road charging schemes is underway.
An early warning of the revolt came a few weeks ago, when the Conservatives won a local by-election in Cambridge. It wasn’t exactly national news, but became the first Tory on Cambridge City Council for twelve years. Remarkably, he did it by winning in a ward — the splendidly named King’s Hedges — where we came fourth in 2019. That’s quite the revival, but one needn’t look far for the cause: local opposition to the proposed Cambridge congestion charge.
For a desperate Tory leadership, the road charging backlash is rare cause for hope. Just for once, public frustration is working in our favour. Unexpectedly, we’ve become a protest party — with angry residents readily identifying a Conservative vote as the most effective means of registering their displeasure.
And yet, as Downing Street and GCHQ move-in to take ownership of this agenda, there’s a real risk that they’ll get it badly wrong. In fact, there are worrying signs that a case of Uxbridge Derangement Syndrome has broken out in the upper echelons of the party.
So beguiled are they by the possibilities offered by this ‘wedge issue’, that Cabinet ministers have begun to question their own energy, environment and transport policies. This is a massive over-reaction.
For a start, most of the country isn’t affected by road charging schemes. Even within the urban areas that do or might have them, the geographical relevance is limited to outer suburbs — like Uxbridge and King’s Hedges — where people most rely on their cars. In city centres, anti-congestion measures and air quality controls — for instance the ULEZ within its existing boundaries — are less controversial.
To make this a national issue at the next election, Downing Street needs a way of upping the ante. But how? In theory, the Government could use it majority to over-rule the London mayor and block the ULEZ expansion, but is it really willing to undo 25 years of devolution?
In any case, by the time that ministers decide what to do, Keir Starmer might have shot their fox. In a weekend speech to Labour’s National Policy Forum he said “we are doing something very wrong if policies put forward by the Labour Party end up on each and every Tory leaflet.” He didn’t mention the ULEZ expansion by name, but coming straight after a reference to Uxbridge, his meaning was clear. There’s also talk of sending a delegation of outer London Labour MPs and candidates to talk sense into Sadiq Khan.
That may take some time, but the Labour leadership will do everything possible to make sure this isn’t an issue at the next election.
If Starmer succeeds, then senior Tories will need some way of keeping the story going — and this is where I fear they might do something really stupid. Already there’s ministerial chatter about broadening the assault on ULEZ into a general attack on greenery. The supposed logic is that while Starmer is happy to throw Khan under a London bus, he can’t do the same to Net Zero.
No indeed — but neither can Rishi Sunak. Our Net Zero commitments aren’t free floating, they’re bound into British law and international agreements. They also provide the basis on which businesses are committing billions of pounds in long-term investment. To blow hot and cold on this policy for the sake of short-term media management just makes the Government look unreliable. A prime example is the 2030 target on electric cars: in one story, ministers appear to question the deadline, but then elsewhere insist that nothing has changed. Flakiness is not a vote winner.
Speaking of which, the fact remains that the broad thrust of climate policy enjoys strong support from voters. YouGov polling shows that ULEZ is a rare example of an unpopular environmental measure (though not nearly so unpopular as fracking for gas). Of course, if politicians bungle the move to new technologies like electric cars or heat pumps, then those policies would become unpopular too. But as they’ve yet to come to the crunch and are, in any case, a national government responsibility, it is hard to see the advantage in declaring them ‘pre-failed’.
The present Cabinet should also recall what happened when David Cameron went from hug-a-husky to cutting the green crap. Among other things, investment in energy efficiency was slashed, a false economy that left British households and businesses badly exposed to the recent surge in fossil fuel prices. As always, there’s no guarantee that ‘Not Zero’ will be cheaper or easier than Net Zero.
OK, if there’s no mileage in going overtly anti-green, then what about going pro-motorist? A Tory crusade against speed cameras, bike lanes and Low Traffic Neighbourhoods might win a few votes. Yet one shouldn’t confuse opposition to the ULEZ expansion with support for petrolhead politics. I don’t doubt that the ‘freedom of road’ appeals to small-c conservative sentiment, but so does the freedom to breathe clean air and to not have your neighbourhood used as a rat run.
Finally, as Uxbridge Derangement Syndrome runs its course, let’s not forget that though the ULEZ expansion is a badly-designed policy that imposes disproportionate costs on ordinary people, there’s nothing wrong with road charging in principle. If smartly implemented, it is a market-based solution to a problem that also imposes disproportionate costs on ordinary people, i.e. congestion. Conservatives don’t usually object to using the price mechanism to allocate scarce resources, so why should road space be an exception?
Over the next 20 years, the shift to electric vehicles will end the pollution problem — and therefore the need for low emission zones. However, electrification will not uncrowd our roads. Phasing-out the use of petrol and diesel also means that fuel duty revenues (£25 billion in 2022/23) will dwindle away — leaving a huge hole in the government’s finances. According to the Office for Budget Responsibility, the lost revenues will reach £13 billion per year by 2030. The share of the tax burden currently shouldered by motorists will need to be replaced.
A national road charging system is the most obvious solution here and is preferable to a patchwork of local tolls or a massive increase in vehicle excise duty. Therefore an absolutist position against all road charging would be shortsighted in the extreme.
But perhaps we don’t care about serious policy-making anymore. Perhaps the only thing that matters now is limiting our losses at the next general election. In which case, Rishi Sunak might as well turn to the camera and say: “read my lips, no new road charges.”
That could save us a few seats in the outer suburbs. And yet at some point we might like to return to office, which means being seen as a responsible party of government.