RISHI SUNAK’S new championing of the car indicates both the cynicism and desperation of today’s Tories.
If the Prime Minister thinks an attack on low-traffic neighbourhoods is a route to electoral victory, he is clutching at straws.
But it indicates the extent of the rot at Westminster that even this sad gimmick from an exhausted government may yet find its echo on the Labour front bench.
Sunak’s back-to-the-1950s declaration that he wants to help people “use their cars to do all the things that matter to them” could presage a new era of climate denialism in British politics.
It is not the open denialism associated with Donald Trump across the Atlantic. Sunak’s new energy security policy pays lip service to the need to invest in renewables and carbon capture.
But if even baby steps towards reducing emissions like attempts to limit traffic in urban areas are to be reversed, acknowledging the reality of global warming means nothing.
Sunak’s pro-motorist pitch is part of the fallout from the unexpected Conservative win in Uxbridge the week before last.
Tories and Labour attribute this to the unpopularity of the ultra-low emissions zone (Ulez) extension to the area, though other factors — including the imposition of an outside candidate against the wishes of most Labour branches in the constituency — likely played some part.
But targeting low-traffic neighbourhoods is worse than U-turns on Ulez.
Expensive charges on car journeys in areas not well served by public transport are quite different from measures to deter through traffic in residential neighbourhoods, which do not restrict car use by those who live there but do make streets quieter and safer, while significantly improving air quality (air pollution is estimated to kill 28-36,000 people a year in Britain).
They received a fillip during Covid lockdowns, with the importance of clean air, green space and places for people to socialise outdoors coming to the fore. Now they too may become just another signal of our politicians’ determination to learn nothing from the pandemic and simply turn back the clock.
Tory hostility to these neighbourhoods is more than tinged with conspiracy. Don Valley MP Nick Fletcher calls them an “international socialist concept” designed to suppress individual freedoms.
Far-right protests have denounced their association with “15-minute cities” — actually a planning concept involving all facilities needed on a regular basis, from schools to GPs to shops, being accessible within a 15-minute walk or cycle to boost community economies, cut commutes and reduce emissions, but one warped by right-wing propaganda into an attempt to restrict our freedom of movement.
Sunak’s elevation following the disaster-premiership of Liz Truss was pitched as the grown-ups taking control. But in the interests of rallying his back-bench crazies (Fletcher was a Truss cheerleader) and in the absence of a better plan to revive his party’s fortunes (any moves to raise wages, control prices or challenge corporate profits being off the table), he too is prepared to march with the far right — as he already does on immigration.
This nonsense needs rebuttal. We do not need a new age of the car, but real investment in public transport.
There are votes in that, too: the failings of our bus and train networks are national scandals. The Westminster consensus that nothing can be done about that is about cosseting shareholders, not winning votes.
But it will continue until an electoral cost is attached.
Unions and Labour members can demonstrate this, even if only by refusing to campaign for candidates who will not commit to reversing Tory policies.
We must hope too that the growing list of left-of-Labour challengers, with former Kensington MP Emma Dent Coad the latest to signal an interest, can return the public debate to the policies we need, rather than those a moribund political system defaults to.
