ULEZ: a political scapegoat

In recent months, Conservative discourse has worked an attack on policies to tackle climate change. This effort has focused on the 2050 net zero target, which requires the UK to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050. On climate net-zero targets, Dame Priti Patel cited a ‘corrosive culture’. In an interview with GB News she said, ‘my views on this are that actually we need to pause all this activity’, seeming to lean into the idea that time is a malleable concept as, ‘2030 is not that far away you know, click your fingers [and] 2050 will be upon us’. Patel seems to have forgotten that the net zero target was made legally binding by the Climate Change Act 2008, which was amended in June 2019. The great British ‘public’, she claims, ‘are not ready for this.’ Surely she could not be referring to the Conservative voter base in the Uxbridge by-election the Tories won by merely 495 votes? This was a win that the Conservatives claim to have been won on the back of a campaign against the expansion of the Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ). The by-election is a not so shocking indictment of a politics seemingly driven solely by the need for power and a dismissal of years of scientific consensus and warnings.

This move was echoed in the words of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak who said his cabinet would ‘continually examine and scrutinise new policies’, which should not ‘unnecessarily give people more hassle and more costs in their lives’. Climate action, he believes, should be approached ‘in a proportionate and pragmatic way’. He should tell that to the Greenpeace activists arrested for climbing onto the roof of his £2 million house in North Yorkshire in protest of the government press release on 31 July 2023. This states the government's commitment to expanding North Sea oil extraction by promising 100 new oil and gas licensing rounds claiming to protect British ‘energy security’. Not only does this endanger climate targets, but its justification is based on flawed logic; under the UK’s non-nationalised system, any fossil fuel extracted is owned by a privately owned company who may or may not sell to the UK government. This means that British ‘energy security’ is not ensured, but rather remains a bidding war between nations. This does not change the status quo, but instead entrenches a system determined to extract the earth’s finite resources for economic profit and political gain.

A few days after this move was announced, Rishi Sunak told LBC that his daughters are not ‘eco-zealots’. They are ‘open to sensible, practical arguments’ as ‘passionate environmentalists’. This well-timed interview is yet another case of men relying on a narrative of their daughters for their own ethical, climate consciousness; a smoke and mirrors ploy to distract from their dwindling commitments to net zero targets.

Labour have followed suit with Sir Keir Stamer asking Sadiq Khan on 22nd July to “reflect” on ULEZ expansion due to concerns about “impact” on people. This U-turn move is believed to have been in response to the defeats in the Uxbridge and South-Ruislip by-elections. Indeed, statements supporting the ULEZ expansion are reported to have been removed from a Labour party handbook. This joint rejection of ULEZ by both the Conservatives and Labour paints a depressing image of the current political appetite for upholding legal commitments to net-zero. The voracious media coverage of ULEZ in recent weeks and days is only reflective of a culture where climate action becomes diluted and distorted in the name of votes and political seats; given the published report by Imperial College London released on 10 February, which found that ULEZ expansion in London is estimated to have led to a reduction of 5,000 tonnes in harmful emissions and amounting to a 26 percent reduction, this proves only more concerning. This by-party rejection is a damning indictment of a politics that dismisses decades of climate science and warnings in favour of a tussle for political power.