Sunak cries freedom for drivers
Why is the PM playing William Wallace for wagoneers by calling for a review of low traffic neighbourhoods when 82% of the UK public think tackling air pollution is a priority?
Despite growing evidence that most people in the UK want to see faster progress towards cleaner air and Net Zero, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is busy suggesting the relevant policies to tackle these issues should be slammed into reverse.
A clue to what is driving Sunak can be found in a recent event I attended in Edinburgh. It was hosted by the anti-ULEZ (Ultra Low Emissions Zones), anti-LTN (Low Traffic Neighbourhoods), anti-anything that makes sense campaign group Together. It was billed as a public meeting to find common ground but it was actually a campaign rally designed to use the notion of lost freedoms as a wedge issue to maximise insecurity, fuel distrust in politicians and disrupt the growing consensus that we are currently hurtling to hell in a fossil-fuelled handcart.
All five panellists and the chair made clear their support for Together’s cause and appeared to agree that many current policies, especially those designed to clean up dirty air, make walking or cycling easier or avert climate catastrophe, are sinister attempts to control us.
Their dominant theme was hypocrisy and lack of trustworthiness in all politicians who, we were led to believe, are self-interested enough to say or do anything to continue their dastardly power grabs. Why Sunak and others seem to think they can appease this type of lobby group by flip-flopping on policy and proving their point is a complete mystery.
Savvy enough to know that Scots don't like being lectured to by outsiders the panel summoned up the ghosts of the Enlightenment to paint a ghastly picture of a once proud city now ruined by "ugly" vehicle blocking flower-filled planters. If the Enlightenment philosophers David Hume or Adam Smith walked among us today, they implied, they would weep at the sight of a nation deprived of the freedom to damage our children's lungs, hearts and brains by pumping out as much air pollution whenever and wherever we want.
One of the panellists, James Melville, best known for an egotistical social media post about being recognised by a butcher in Fife, was clearly trying hard to look interested in what his fellow panellists had to say. His listening face seemed carefully organised to give the impression of a brooding intellectual messiah. Unfortunately, if he was trying for mesmerising oratory 1930s Oswald Mosley style he failed. As soon as he opened his mouth it was obvious that he had more in common with a cow's backside. It's not unusual for people to treat Scots as if they have mince for brains but this speech was a masterclass in the genre . His stream of verbal diarrhoea included saying he wasn't there to talk about COVID while talking about almost nothing else except the idea that pubs and clubs in his hometown of Truro were "struggling" only because local people are trapped in a 15 minute neighbourhood.
If you are convinced that Melville's imaginary 15 minute neighbourhood prisons exist and are coming soon to a town near you then you might also, as some of the audience clearly did, buy into the bonkers suggestion from the panel that politicians are planning to have us all barcoded. Even bargain basement conspiracy theorists know how to work on people's insecurities to gain traction so it is interesting that when calling out the supposed threat of increased digitisation, none of the cracked actors on the panel focused mainly if at all on the role of big tech. While they fulminated against municipal bureaucracy and apparently villainous elected members at every level of government, businesses were generally cast as victims. Could it be that some of this campaign's undeclared funders don't want anyone taking a hard look at how poor behaviour by business, including poverty pay and excessive profit-making, is driving much of the distress and anxiety that makes people easy meat for the conspiracy theorists?
Campaign organiser Alan Miller was clearly thrilled by the turnout but thin-skinned enough to spend time denying he was just a "gammon". Quite right too, he was definitely more fishy in nature. His presentation was about as electrifying as a dead and jellied eel and the content stank like a month old haddock. Given that the audience seemed pre-primed to frame all politicians as untrustworthy, anti-democratic fat cats feasting on the fines generated by their newly installed ANPR cameras Miller obviously didn't feel he had to try too hard to rally his tartan army. In a weird cosplay moment best described as Richard Desmond does an insufficiently tangerine Trump, pasty-faced Miller shouted something about moving "them all out of the way". Sunak’s wobble is all the more incredible in the light of this closing rhetorical flourish which sounded more like a plan to call in Pickfords than an exhortation to storm any capital.
Laughable though it is to hear grown men claiming that it is too cold, wet and dangerous to cycle in winter or, as an audience member put it, footage of wildfires in Sicily were "more BBC lies", the ease with which these unelected, dishonest, egotists have captured a loyal following shouldn't be ignored. Many of their claims are undoubtedly farcical but when woven together with themes that trouble many of us - from lack of political accountability in a first past the post electoral system, to the escalating cost of living and lack of easy access to a dentist or GP - it is easy to understand how people get drawn in.
The local policymakers who told me after this event that they don't attend or speak at these kinds of meetings because doing so would give them greater credibility might be wise. But having seen firsthand how easy it is to whip up anger and hatred when people are feeling insecure and unheard I wonder how making a virtue out of not listening is going to help the vital work of winning back hearts and addled minds.