By Jo Nova
UK surprise byelection “shows why conservatives must stand against NetZero”
Suddenly conservative Cabinet Ministers, who formerly cheered on green policies are telling Rishi Sunak, the British PM, to back off a bit on Net Zero. This phase shift is so deep, even the leader of the Labor Opposition is warning his Labor counterpart Sadiq Khan, Mayor of London to “reflect” on his expansion of the ULEZ car tax zone to outer London.
ULEZ is the Ultra Low Emission Zone, where a tax of £12.50 a day applies to high emission cars. Naturally, this hurts poor people with old cars living in outer suburbs much more than the inner city cafe latte set who can afford an EV and luxury religions.
The key point, perversely, is that Conservatives managed to barely hold onto Boris Johnson’s old seat of Uxbridge and South Ruislip. What apparently astonished the political masters was that the campaign to protect car drivers from the Mayor of London’s NetZero punishment was much more popular than they expected. The Uxbridge win plays against the backdrop of two whopping losses in other seats. The message is that salvation may yet arrive for doomed conservatives if they stand up to green policies.
But if the Labor Party are smart (and evil), they will bury their unpopular Green fantasies, keep their heads down, and after winning, bring in the policies regardless. We’ve seen this in Australia — at the last election Green policies were only visible in a few wealthy inner city seats where Green fantasies survive. Out in the suburbs the Conservatives didn’t fight for the battlers against Net Zero and they lost. The costs of Net Zero were barely mentioned.
If Labor “don’t mention the Green thing”, Conservatives can still make it the issue and demand answers and promises from the Labor Party on what they will and won’t do. They can be proactive in putting forward policies the Labor Party can’t even consider, like drilling for gas, No Carbon Taxes, or like letting people decide they can drive whatever car they want.
Thanks to the GWPF and NetZeroWatch for the links.
UK Newspapers are full of the lessons of Uxbridge:
Ulez became a lightning rod
Sir Iain Duncan Smith, MP, The Telegraph UK
The Conservatives offered a clear choice and the electorate responded.
The lesson therefore to take from this by-election is much greater than just the issue of Ulez, important as that is. Voters are angry – angry that their taxes are high and that their cost of living is too high.
They are also angry that the establishment obsession with net zero has led to an arbitrary and very costly 2030 deadline to get rid of diesel and petrol cars, even though it could cripple our car industry, flood the market with cheap Chinese cars and pile further costs on people’s already stretched incomes. Not to mention the very expensive upcoming ban on new gas boilers as well.
It shouldn’t have taken much to work out that a highly-regressive tax on the relatively poor was not going to go down well among Labour voters – yet so blinded are many in the party on green issues that they just couldn’t see it. That includes Keir Starmer who two weeks ago told the obvious fib that Sadiq Khan had no choice but to expand Ulez.
But it isn’t just Labour which should be shaken by this result. Paradoxically, although the Conservatives won, the result is a dire warning to them, too.
Janet Daley, The Daily Telegraph:
For the Tory leadership, there could not be a more explicit illustration of the limits to the electorate’s tolerance of supposed green measures. People might just accept some hardships – especially if they are presented as temporary – but they are not prepared to sacrifice their entire way of life.
If you threaten people’s livelihoods and what they regard as their fundamental rights to mobility and self-reliance, they will use the democratic process to get rid of you. The Uxbridge victory which, on the face of it, was the most minimal, may come to be seen as the most important of all.
For fans of Climate-Action, it’s a “disaster”.
So sayth Stephen Bush, Financial Times
It’s the narrow Conservative victory in South Ruislip and Uxbridge that is the real shock.
What is certain is that the results are a disaster for Conservative environmentalists and, by extension, climate politics in the UK. It will feed the internal argument that, when push comes to shove, for all British voters say they care about green politics, they will reject measures that impose a personal cost. It will also seem to some that the best route for a Conservative recovery at the next election will involve minimising, and perhaps even running away from, the net zero target.
It will feed the internal argument that, when push comes to shove, for all British voters say they care about green politics, they will reject measures that impose a personal cost. It will also seem to some that the best route for a Conservative recovery at the next election will involve minimising, and perhaps even running away from, the net zero target.
The Guardian is apoplectic — they can see politicians campaigning against Net Zero, so they ramp up hyperbolic scares of mythical voter desire for “Net Zero”. Editors at the Guardian surely know this isn’t true. If voters really did want Net Zero, The Guardian wouldn’t be so afraid that the voters might get a choice.
“Dropping green pledges would be ‘political suicide’, Sunak and Starmer warned”
There are fears that both Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer will loosen their support for such policies after the Conservatives’ surprise win in the Uxbridge and South Ruislip byelection on Thursday. The Tories narrowly won the seat, by just 495 votes, with a campaign that capitalised on opposition to plans by London’s Labour mayor Sadiq Khan to extend the ultra low emission zone (Ulez).
The Guardian tells us what they want us to think, not what the news is:
Senior figures from business, the scientific community and across the political divide warned that any watering down of climate policies would be deeply unpopular with voters, set back the international fight to reach net zero and damage Britain’s green reputation.
If they wanted us to think NetZero was a futile pagan quest that enriches billionaires, they would have asked different “senior figures”.
UK Flag: Rian (Ree) Saunders