If by-elections are about a risk-free method of sending messages to the government, last week saw two different signals being transmitted, but the one intended for the Conservatives was louder and broadcast more widely. In Selby and Frome, voters were sick of the sleaze, corruption, incompetence, lies and the ever-rising cost of living and ever-falling quality of public services, particularly the NHS. In Uxbridge, voters I'm sure felt the same, but around half were also exercised by the Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) being extended to cover them, forcing drivers to pay a daily charge to use their car from August or buy a newer, cleaner vehicle.
This was unfortunate for Labour. The messages got mixed but even there they enjoyed a swing of 6.7% which, if it applied nationwide in 2024, would mean they would probably be the largest party in parliament. So, not a great result (and not expected) but they still cut the Tory majority by well over 90%.
To remove the Tory's majority a uniform national swing of 3.5% is required. To get Labour as the largest party with no overall majority we need 7%. To win a Labour majority it's a 12% swing. In Selby and Frome, it was well over double that.
So, still on track and perhaps a useful lesson for Starmer and London Mayor Sadiq Khan. Better to find your weak spots before the big test. They are now "reflecting" on ULEZ but it would be a shame if they were to water down anything connected with mitigating climate change as the BBC reports this morning: "Climate records tumble, leaving Earth in uncharted territory - scientists."
The plan is to take ULEZ even further out and embrace all 73 constituencies in Greater London from the 37 it covers now. A move which a lot of voters find irksome and expensive during a cost of living crisis. So, Labour may find the swing in London is not as massive as elsewhere, but only on about a fifth of all the constituencies up for grabs next year.
Perhaps the £110 million scrappage scheme to help drivers buy cleaner vehicles needs to be improved and expanded, after all, the ULEZ charge raised £224 million last year, so it would almost certainly be self-financing. There is an irony here in that it was Johnson who instigated ULEZ in 2015, although it didn't come in until 2020 and was expanded slightly to its present boundaries in 2021.
The irony is even greater if it's true that when Grant Shapps was Conservative's Transport secretary in 2020 he made expanding ULEZ a condition of providing funding to TfL (Transport for London):
I’m really confused now. In this letter from then Transport Secretary Grant Shapps to London Mayor Sadiq Khan in May 2020, Shapps makes it clear that for TfL to have access to ‘extraordinary funding’ they had to ‘urgently bring forward proposals to widen the scope and levels of… pic.twitter.com/h7mUhPEjmI
— Simon Harris - Man Behaving Dadly (THAT’S DADLY) (@simonharris_mbd) July 21, 2023
I have no idea if this is true or not but Labour isn't making the point so there may be less to it than meets the eye.
Some Tories are taking comfort in the Uxbridge result but I suspect it will be short-lived and any benefit will be small. Most Tory MPs are not in London and they will be looking ominously at the 24-29% swings seen on Thursday in what were rock-solid conservative seats.
Jonathan Freedland argues in the Guardian today that revulsion against the Conservatives isn't enough for Labour to win (it is for me, I have no real idea what Labour's policies will be next year but I'll still vote for them, not being Tory is good enough for me) and they need "a few costed, immediately understandable pledges that illustrate how life would be better under a Labour government."
Well, I'm sure we'll get something to help but there are also another eighteen months of belt-tightening, rising mortgage costs, a slowing economy and more sleaze so I don't believe there is any need to worry that Sunak will still be in Downing Street in 2025.
The problem for this government is that it has essentially spent seven years navel-gazing, arguing among itself, undermining its own leaders (Johnson and Truss undermined themselves) and shouting about sovereignty on Brexit. Brexit has been an all-consuming monster. They have spent virtually zero time since 2016 thinking about anything that might improve the lot of ordinary men and women. It has all been about process, about distancing ourselves from the EU and little else.
They assumed the mass of the electorate shared their visceral hatred of all things European but in 2016 I think the majority of leave voters chose Brexit to make their lives better and unarguably it hasn't done that and nor is it likely to, certainly not in the next few decades and not ever in my opinion.
I am not struggling financially or in any other way for that matter and nor am I wealthy but I look around at others who are in real difficulty, forced into food banks, living in poor accommodation, unable to get timely treatment on the NHS. I see the growing inequality, the decrepit infrastructure, and the weeds growing out of the peeling paint and rotten wood of High Street shop fronts.
We seem to be a nation that has given up and accepted the slow descent into poverty.
I don't expect labour to make things better quickly but I do expect them not to go on making them worse as the present-day Conservative party is hell-bent on doing. I also want to see policies that will at the very minimum set us on the path to a better more prosperous future.
I don't want to see any more multi-millionaires sitting in government telling people who are struggling to exist, to hold their nerve and stick it out. That would be a good start.
