Some Conservatives are going to take heart from the by-election results. They may have lost Somerset and Frome to the Liberal Democrats on a 29 per cent swing. Selby and Ainsty may have fallen to Labour, who overturned their biggest ever majority (20,137) at a by-election. But they held on in Boris Johnson’s former seat, Uxbridge and South Ruislip. By just 495 votes, mind you, but a win is a win. Labour is blaming its defeat on local opposition to Sadiq Khan’s Ulez policy.
The lesson some Tories will take from this is that they must pivot to champion ordinary people, particularly motorists, over policies to limit carbon emissions. Put Sir Keir Starmer on the wrong side of the very workers he has to win back to form a Labour government. There are a few problems with this.
One, voters aren’t stupid. It was the Tories — Boris Johnson himself — who introduced the first ultra low emission zone. If they tried to make a general election issue out of Ulez and similar policies across the country, Labour could readily point to the Conservative government’s close involvement in the establishment of these schemes. Yes, Birmingham’s Labour-run council set up the city’s clean air zone, but it was given the green light to do so by the government — plus £52 million to help put the scheme into action.
The government, like all dying governments, can’t seem to stir itself to do anything
Up the M6, the government issued a ministerial direction ‘requiring Greater Manchester councils to implement a charging Clean Air Zone Class C’. The scheme was only paused last year after Manchester’s Labour mayor Andy Burnham lobbied ministers, calling its short timescale ‘unworkable’ and warning that drivers would be penalised for a shortage in electric vehicles. The Tories went out of their way to rebrand themselves as green, under both Boris and David Cameron. They can’t suddenly pivot to white van man and expect to be taken seriously as the champions of hard-pressed working people.
Two, turning against low emission zones and other climate measures might play well with certain demographics, but it risks losing the Tories votes elsewhere. Somerset and Frome is a prime example. Run an anti-green national campaign there next year and the result is likely to be much the same as last night. Sixty-nine per cent of voters, and 71 per cent of Tory voters, say they want the government to take more action on climate change. As for white van man, two-thirds with a level two education (post-GCSE school leavers and apprentices) support stepping up efforts to combat global warming. Yes, the public is growing tired of Just Stop Oil’s tantrum-antics, but unless you live in London you’re unlikely to have been personally inconvenienced by them. Whether the Conservatives like it or not, green politics is here to stay and its appeal extends far beyond the tree-huggers and swamp enthusiasts of yesteryear. It’s not the Nineties anymore and you can’t win an election campaigning like it is.
Three, even if an anti-green pivot could somehow help the Tories cling on next year, or even just lose respectably rather than cataclysmically, such a strategy would have to clear some major internal hurdles. There’s inertia: the government, like all dying governments, can’t seem to stir itself to do anything, even when electoral advantage is on the table. The boats crisis and the Rwanda plan are obvious examples of that. There’s ineptitude: what little ministers seem to do now they invariably do poorly, such as the creaking rust-bucket of tech ignorance that is the Online Safety Bill.
There’s Rishi Sunak. He’s just, well, pretty bad at this whole prime minister thing. He doesn’t project leadership, he doesn’t appear to have a strategic vision, and he shows no facility for tactics. Were the Tories to switch to a populist, anti-green message, it’s not obvious that he would be able to sell it to voters.
No, the Tories are heading for an almighty drubbing. These by-elections confirm it. It’s now a matter of shoring up as many seats as they can. Going by their performance last night, they have a job of work on their hands.
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