Social Europe

  • EU Forward Project
  • YouTube
  • Podcast
  • Books
  • Newsletter
  • Membership

The answer to an anti-green backlash is to be redder

Paul Mason 31st July 2023

Labour must not follow the Tories downwards, Paul Mason writes, as they grasp at electoral straws.

ULEZ,green,Labour,Tories,Uxbridge
The Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer, did not rally to the defence of his party’s demonised London mayor, Sadiq Khan (JessicaGirvan/shutterstock.com)

By dawn on Friday July 21st, Britain’s ruling Conservative Party had been routed in parliamentary by-elections in two of its rural English strongholds. In Somerton and Frome in the south-west, where a military-helicopter base sits alongside picturesque villages, the Liberal Democrats overturned a 19,000 majority. In Selby and Ainsty, which covers farmland between Leeds and York in the north, Labour destroyed a 20,000 majority, establishing a 4,000-vote advantage of its own.

On any other night this would have registered as a political earthquake. But the headlines were set by a third by-election, in the London suburb of Uxbridge—former seat of the disgraced prime minister Boris Johnson. Here, against the odds, the Tories narrowly won.

Clean-air scheme

Uxbridge stayed Tory because its voters turned out to protest against a London-wide clean-air scheme, the Ultra-Low Emission Zone (ULEZ), imposed by the city’s Labour (and first Muslim) mayor, Sadiq Khan. ULEZ requires cars to comply with strict rules on emissions of nitrous oxide, which causes 4,000 premature deaths a year in the city, according to research. Cars that breach the criteria have to pay a punitive £12.50 per day to enter the zone.

ULEZ is already in force in central London, where pollution levels are the equivalent of each adult involuntarily smoking 150 cigarettes a year. But Khan plans to extended the scheme to outer London, whose suburban populations are heavily reliant on car transport and whose workforce includes many embodiments of ‘white van man’—skilled manual workers and delivery drivers whose jobs depend on their ability to drive.

Despite only 10 per cent of cars needing to be scrapped under the scheme, according to the mayor, the Tories succeeded in making ULEZ a cause célèbre. They pitted the gritty suburbs against the high-rise city-centre dwellers, Tory local councils against the overweening London state, ‘ordinary Joes’ against the ‘woke’ eco-warriors. Removing their party logo from posters, the Tories turned the by-election into a single-issue referendum on ULEZ—and narrowly won.

‘Green crap’

Though ULEZ is not, technically, a climate-related measure, the lessons were immediately generalised, and indeed catastrophised, on both sides of politics. Suddenly, if only it could get rid of all the ‘green crap’—as the last Conservative prime minister but three, David Cameron, once determined—the flailing government of Rishi Sunak could see a route away from general-election disaster next year. Lord Frost, architect of Johnson’s ‘hard Brexit’ strategy, urged Sunak to abandon the commitment to phasing out petrol and diesel cars by 2030. Most Brits, he argued, would benefit from climate change, as cold killed more people than extreme heat.

Labour, meanwhile, entered self-flagellation mode. Its entire electoral focus—in the context of the United Kingdom’s unreformed, first-past-the-post system, centring on outcomes in a few marginal constituencies—has been on winning in conservative, small-town or suburban working-class communities such as Uxbridge. It allowed its local candidate to oppose the ULEZ extension, while the party leader, Sir Keir Starmer, adopted a neutral position. In the aftermath of defeat, numerous voices—from the energy unions to the former Labour prime minister Tony Blair—suggested the party should avoid asking voters to shoulder the ‘huge burden’ of climate-mitigation measures.

For climate campaigners, the fear is that—as with the proverbial butterfly in chaos theory—the votes of 490 people in Uxbridge could tip Britain’s two main parties into practical abandonment of the UK’s legally-binding 2050 net-zero target. Labour has committed to achieving a carbon-free electricity supply by 2030 and to spending £28 billion a year on decarbonising the economy. But it has already pared back that sum on grounds of fiscal risks and, if Sunak makes a bonfire of green commitments, will be under pressure to do likewise.

Extremely committed

The paradox is UK voters are extremely committed to green-transition measures. Research for the Financial Times shows that—from the 2030 ban on petrol cars, to a tax on frequent flyers, to tripling public investment in renewable energy—the British electorate is way more positive than its American, German and French counterparts. Just as important, the spread between Conservative and Labour voters is much smaller than, for example, between Republicans and Democrats in the United States. 

Radical action on climate change is as close to an issue of political consensus as Britain gets in these days of ‘culture wars’. But politicians are right to be nervous: beneath that consensus lies a profound lack of realism about the fiscal and social costs of the transition. Because the UK was the first country in the G7 to legislate quasi-irrevocable decarbonisation targets (which can only be changed if the science changes), it has enjoyed the illusion that these accrue cross-party support.

In reality, the Conservative government is way off complying with the Climate Change Act. Responding to an action by environmental nongovernmental organisations, the High Court in London ruled in July 2022 that it must provide more detailed reporting. The Climate Change Committee, the government-appointed watchdog, warned in June that the prospects for meeting emissions targets for 2030 and 2035 had ‘worsened due to delays in action leading to increased delivery risk’. 

Truth and delusion

Meanwhile, the planet is burning. People in Arizona are dying from third-degree burns sustained by contact with pavements. Forest fires have consumed woodland, from Tunisia to Sicily to Rhodes. Excruciatingly high temperatures in India and record ice melts in the Antarctic complete the picture of a complex ecosystem becoming qualitatively destabilised.

What we are seeing, through such events as the Uxbridge by-election, is truth colliding with delusion. The transition beyond carbon was always going to be a distributional challenge: the technology is substantially there but the radical changes in lifestyle, urban planning, transport modes, energy and food consumption were always going to have winners and losers.

The more the state could prime the investment, the better the outcomes were going to be. But in the post-2008 world, states are carrying massive debts. Even if, as is morally right, we decide that the taxpayers of the future should shoulder the costs, through increased borrowing now, there are constraints and downsides to doing so, given the low savings rates in developed western economies.

‘Who pays?’

The question ‘who pays?’ can only partially be shifted into the future. The £110 million scrappage scheme Khan attached to ULEZ expansion—targeted at small businesses and low-income households—was neither enough nor, more importantly, persuasive. 

Hard-pressed working people and small-business owners understood they would be forced to scrap their vans and cars. They became receptive to the message that this was being done for the benefit of others, not themselves—specifically, the (highly ethnically diverse) population of inner London, where housing density is high and car use low.

In fact, a report prepared for Khan’s City Hall, but released only after the by-election, revealed that the ethnic inequalities in air toxicity in London, while major, did not fall out in this way. Not only do ‘the areas in London with the lowest air pollution concentrations have a disproportionately white population’, according to the researchers, but the inequalities are greatest in the outer-London suburbs, where leafy white professional enclaves sit alongside poor areas deprived of public transport, with concentrations of minority ethnicity. 

The Tories’ genius consisted of grasping the fears and enmities around these issues. They then exploited them implicitly while saying precisely nothing—and nothing precise—publicly.

Climate justice

If the Uxbridge result does one thing for Labour it should be to focus its mind on climate justice. A better scrappage scheme, phased introduction and better messaging could have softened the blow of ULEZ extension. But easing the impact of major reductions in dairy farming and meat consumption, major changes in housing regulations or enforced transition from gas-fired central heating is going to take billions, not millions.

The Conservatives have a clear position on who pays: intergenerational justice, says Sunak, mandates that all climate-mitigation spending should be financed out of taxation of the current workforce. The left needs to have a persuasive alternative: protect the poorest, tax the rich, borrow from the future, have the state lead the private sector where it can and, where it cannot, supplant the latter.

The transition beyond carbon is, in the last analysis, a class struggle. That, paradoxically, is the lesson of Uxbridge—and the sooner Labour learns it, the better.

This is a joint publication by Social Europe and IPS-Journal

Paul Mason
Paul Mason

Paul Mason is a journalist, writer and filmmaker. His latest book is How To Stop Fascism: History, Ideology, Resistance (Allen Lane). His most recent films include R is For Rosa, with the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung. He writes weekly for New Statesman and contributes to Der Freitag and Le Monde Diplomatique.

Harvard University Press Advertisement

Social Europe Ad - Promoting European social policies

We need your help.

Support Social Europe for less than €5 per month and help keep our content freely accessible to everyone. Your support empowers independent publishing and drives the conversations that matter. Thank you very much!

Social Europe Membership

Click here to become a member

Most Recent Articles

u421983467298feb62884 0 The Weak Strongman: How Trump’s Presidency Emboldens America’s EnemiesTimothy Snyder
u4201 af20 c4807b0e1724 3 Ballots or Bans: How Should Democracies Respond to Extremists?Katharina Pistor
u421983c824 240f 477c bc69 697bf625cb93 1 Mind the Gap: Can Europe Afford Its Green and Digital Future?Viktor Skyrman
u421983467b5 5df0 44d2 96fc ba344a10b546 0 Finland’s Austerity Gamble: Tax Cuts for the Rich, Pain for the PoorJussi Systä
u421983467 3f8a 4cbb 9da1 1db7f099aad7 0 The Enduring Appeal of the Hybrid WorkplaceJorge Cabrita

Most Popular Articles

startupsgovernment e1744799195663 Governments Are Not StartupsMariana Mazzucato
u421986cbef 2549 4e0c b6c4 b5bb01362b52 0 American SuicideJoschka Fischer
u42198346769d6584 1580 41fe 8c7d 3b9398aa5ec5 1 Why Trump Keeps Winning: The Truth No One AdmitsBo Rothstein
u421983467 a350a084 b098 4970 9834 739dc11b73a5 1 America Is About to Become the Next BrexitJ Bradford DeLong
u4219834676ba1b3a2 b4e1 4c79 960b 6770c60533fa 1 The End of the ‘West’ and Europe’s FutureGuillaume Duval
u421983462e c2ec 4dd2 90a4 b9cfb6856465 1 The Transatlantic Alliance Is Dying—What Comes Next for Europe?Frank Hoffer
u421983467 2a24 4c75 9482 03c99ea44770 3 Trump’s Trade War Tears North America Apart – Could Canada and Mexico Turn to Europe?Malcolm Fairbrother
u4219834676e2a479 85e9 435a bf3f 59c90bfe6225 3 Why Good Business Leaders Tune Out the Trump Noise and Stay FocusedStefan Stern
u42198346 4ba7 b898 27a9d72779f7 1 Confronting the Pandemic’s Toxic Political LegacyJan-Werner Müller
u4219834676574c9 df78 4d38 939b 929d7aea0c20 2 The End of Progess? The Dire Consequences of Trump’s ReturnJoseph Stiglitz

Foundation for European Progressive Studies Advertisement

Spring Issues

The Spring issue of The Progressive Post is out!


Since President Trump’s inauguration, the US – hitherto the cornerstone of Western security – is destabilising the world order it helped to build. The US security umbrella is apparently closing on Europe, Ukraine finds itself less and less protected, and the traditional defender of free trade is now shutting the door to foreign goods, sending stock markets on a rollercoaster. How will the European Union respond to this dramatic landscape change? .


Among this issue’s highlights, we discuss European defence strategies, assess how the US president's recent announcements will impact international trade and explore the risks  and opportunities that algorithms pose for workers.


READ THE MAGAZINE

Hans Böckler Stiftung Advertisement

WSI Report

WSI Minimum Wage Report 2025

The trend towards significant nominal minimum wage increases is continuing this year. In view of falling inflation rates, this translates into a sizeable increase in purchasing power for minimum wage earners in most European countries. The background to this is the implementation of the European Minimum Wage Directive, which has led to a reorientation of minimum wage policy in many countries and is thus boosting the dynamics of minimum wages. Most EU countries are now following the reference values for adequate minimum wages enshrined in the directive, which are 60% of the median wage or 50 % of the average wage. However, for Germany, a structural increase is still necessary to make progress towards an adequate minimum wage.

DOWNLOAD HERE

S&D Group in the European Parliament advertisement

Cohesion Policy

S&D Position Paper on Cohesion Policy post-2027: a resilient future for European territorial equity”,

Cohesion Policy aims to promote harmonious development and reduce economic, social and territorial disparities between the regions of the Union, and the backwardness of the least favoured regions with a particular focus on rural areas, areas affected by industrial transition and regions suffering from severe and permanent natural or demographic handicaps, such as outermost regions, regions with very low population density, islands, cross-border and mountain regions.

READ THE FULL POSITION PAPER HERE

ETUI advertisement

HESA Magazine Cover

What kind of impact is artificial intelligence (AI) having, or likely to have, on the way we work and the conditions we work under? Discover the latest issue of HesaMag, the ETUI’s health and safety magazine, which considers this question from many angles.

DOWNLOAD HERE

Eurofound advertisement

Ageing workforce
How are minimum wage levels changing in Europe?

In a new Eurofound Talks podcast episode, host Mary McCaughey speaks with Eurofound expert Carlos Vacas Soriano about recent changes to minimum wages in Europe and their implications.

Listeners can delve into the intricacies of Europe's minimum wage dynamics and the driving factors behind these shifts. The conversation also highlights the broader effects of minimum wage changes on income inequality and gender equality.

Listen to the episode for free. Also make sure to subscribe to Eurofound Talks so you don’t miss an episode!

LISTEN NOW

Social Europe

Our Mission

Team

Article Submission

Advertisements

Membership

Social Europe Archives

Themes Archive

Politics Archive

Economy Archive

Society Archive

Ecology Archive

Miscellaneous

RSS Feed

Legal Disclosure

Privacy Policy

Copyright

Social Europe ISSN 2628-7641