Voters are rebelling against expensive climate zealotry

Not everyone is taken with the climate change hysteria (Image: Getty) Something unusual happened on Tuesday: the Tories won an election. Not only that, but they did so in a place that has been as arid as Death Valley for Conservative candidates for more than a decade, the ultra-Woke university city of Cambridge. For the first time since 2012, the Conservatives now boast a seat on Cambridge City Council after winning a by-election in the relatively deprived Kings Hedges ward. What, you may ask, possessed the longstanding Labour voters of that locality to turn to the blue team given its many divisions, plummeting living standards, soaring NHS waiting lists and the rest of it? The answer could not have been clearer: there was an uprising against a proposed radical car-charging scheme being backed by local climate zealots from Labour, the Lib Dems and the Greens. Under the plan, car owners would have to pay £5 a day to drive within a new ‘Sustainable Travel Zone’ covering nearly all of the city. As Anthony Browne, the Tory MP for South Cambridgeshire next door, put it, the result marked ‘a massive voter rebellion against the hated Lib Dem and Labour congestion charge’. At the very moment the Tories were winning in Cambridge, Labour’s candidate in the ongoing Uxbridge by-election in outer London, a chap named Danny Beales, did something notable which implied his party knows it is in trouble nationally on this issue. Mr Beales came out against the policy of Labour’s London Mayor Sadiq Khan to immediately extend the city’s Ultra Low Emissions Zone to its outer boroughs. Now was not the right time to force hard-up residents to sell their old cars under the threat of being charged £12.50 every time they drove them, he said. Typically, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer sat on the fence, absurdly saying Mr Khan’s position and Mr Beales’ contradictory one ‘both have to be accommodated’. Given Labour had been expected to win in Uxbridge at a canter following the departure of Boris Johnson as MP, it’s clear something significant is happening. A popular rebellion is underway against prohibitively expensive Left-wing climate zealotry. And I suggest it won’t be confined to road pricing initiatives. The whole panoply of exorbitantly costly Net Zero policies being rushed through under this Government in response to cajoling from Left-wing parties and campaigners are coming into sharp contact with political reality: and an increasingly hard-up electorate thinks the entire political class is out of touch on this issue. While voters do not, in the main, deny the challenges posed by climate change and don’t wish to give up on moving to carbon neutrality, they do expect a sense of proportion to be shown. The majority public view is one of common sense: that the move to Net Zero should be done at a sensible pace while weighing the costs. As a country which now contributes less than one per cent of global emissions, it would be daft to bankrupt ourselves shaving this down at breakneck speed while other giant economies such as China and India pump out ever more emissions from coal-fired power stations and the like. While the Conservatives may reap the benefit of opposing further charges on drivers, they won’t be able to ride this wave of righteous anger among the voters if they continue to march in lockstep with the other parties on the rest of the Net Zero agenda – measures such banning new petrol and diesel cars by 2030, of gas boilers in new homes by 2025 and an outright ban pencilled in for 2033, with gas cookers and hobs likely to follow soon after. Those are some of the most intrusive policies planned, but the vast cost of implementing the agenda by 2050 will generally depress living standards. No wonder four years ago the then chancellor Philip Hammond warned Theresa May it could cost the country around a trillion pounds: all paid by raiding the pockets of taxpayers or cutting future spending on public services. Needless to say, Mrs May, thrashing around for a ‘legacy’, chose to press on. Rishi Sunak, who has just seen the chief Tory climate zealot Zac Goldsmith resign accusing him of not caring enough about the great green transition, should reset policy. The PM should say Britain will continue to reduce greenhouse gas emissions at a prudent pace while keeping an eye on what the world’s big polluters do. If he responds to voters’ concerns, the Tories could win some bigger elections. If he fails, then they could be annihilated.