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The Spectator's Notes

Charles Moore

Wednesday, 14th March 2007

Every winter morning I take a scuttle down to the cellar, fill it with coal and carry it up to light the fire in my study. The coal-dust clings to my shoes and so, as the carpets testify, I have a carbon footprint. David Cameron wants to make it — and everyone else’s — smaller. He is now reaching the dangerous point when his generalised, benevolent sentiments about the planet start to translate into policies which would load new cost on to individuals. His suggested tax on flying is a political mistake because it will be seen, rightly, as hurting poorer people and those who have to pay with their own money. Huge numbers of flights are made by civil servants — often to attend international environmental conferences — but of course they won’t notice the increased cost. Young people, families, small businessmen, lovers all will. The most basic rule for any Conservative considering the structure of taxes should be — identify with the interest of the rising class and support it. Help the people who may not have much money now, but have the energy to try to get on in the world and give their children opportunities which they lacked. Thirty years ago, the prices of nationalised airlines were prohibitively expensive for such people, and so they rejoiced at the entrepreneurs who tried to break this monopoly. Mrs Thatcher, in the same position as David Cameron is today, duly hailed Freddie Laker as the people’s friend. For similar reasons, people often tell opinion polls that if Britain had a president, it should be Richard Branson. Mr Cameron reminds us that there is ‘a perfectly good train service to Manchester’. Perhaps, but its current second-class return from London costs £117. He told the Today programme that his ‘main purpose is to curb the growth of air transport’. You can’t do that without removing one of the great new freedoms of our times. If there really is a problem with the ‘carbon footprint’ of aeroplanes, the solution surely lies in fuel technology, not in trying to force what Mr Cameron irritatingly calls the ‘ordinary British holidaymaker’ to go back to Skegness.

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