The Tories’ only hope of winning is to put the ordinary voter ahead of net-zero dogma.
This column’s law is that all British general election results are, whatever one’s own political views, deserved. The Conservatives deserved to win in 1979, Labour in 1997. In 2010, Labour deserved to lose but the Tories didn’t deserve to win outright. In a sense, the electorate is always right.
This rule applies less to by-elections, because they let voters exaggerate. Nevertheless, all three by-election results on Thursday were deserved. In Somerton and Frome and in Selby and Ainsty, natural Conservatives rightly felt deeply disappointed by this Conservative Government. They therefore backed the likeliest local opponent – Liberal Democrat in the first, Labour in the second. In what felt like tactical voting, Labour lost its deposit where the Lib Dems won, and vice versa.
As for Uxbridge and South Ruislip, Tory disappointment was a factor, but voters had a different ruler to rebel against – Sadiq Khan, the Labour mayor of London. The issue was Ulez, a system that target-bombs poorer people by taxing (and often fining) the owners of older cars. Labour deserved to lose, and did.
The voters in the three different constituencies chose three different parties to win. Although the situation is much worse for the Conservatives than for the other two, these results do suggest an electorate which has not yet made up its mind.
Is there any overall way of capturing what is upsetting people?
It relates to the sense that the consumer or, to put it grandly, the citizen, does not come first in the minds of politicians, bureaucrats, public services and big businesses.
“My heart goes out to the patients,” I heard a man on the radio say this week. Yet he was an NHS consultant on strike. It is hard to see how his heart could really be going out to them all that far, since he (probably already earning a six-figure sum) is choosing to hurt patients by his action. Even when not striking, the NHS is so constructed that the consumer – the patient – is the powerless one. That, not lack of money, is why there is a waiting list seven-and-a-half million long.
Or take the case of Nigel Farage and Coutts bank. As well as being an issue of free speech, it is also a question of professionalism and consideration for the customer. The bank’s internal dossier against Mr Farage, extracted in this paper on Wednesday, was a prejudiced ragbag of comments about his opinions. It expresses shock, for example, that he “believes that people who oppose same-sex marriage, such as Christian and Muslim communities, should be allowed to speak out about their beliefs”.
It also accuses him of having “Thatcherite beliefs”. (Note for younger readers who may be shielded from this information at school: Margaret Thatcher was a 20th-century prime minister so extreme that she won, with large majorities, all three of the general elections in which she led her party.)
What professional banking reason is there for collecting pages of such stuff? Do banks do this to normal customers? Is it for banks to judge, snoop and even sneak on their customers? They prate of their “values”, yet they leaked information about the state of a customer’s finances which managed to be both confidential and untrue at the same time. In order to be “inclusive”, they try to exclude, and cannot see the comic contradiction. They behave like the woke equivalent of the police “canteen culture” – biased against large sections of the public whom they are supposed to serve.
In the wake of the Coutts scandal this week, I talked to a senior banker unhappy with the current trends. He tells me most banks nowadays have what they call “channel strategies”. This jargon means, in plain English, “ways to avoid speaking to customers”.
As readers will know, such strategies are highly successful. If something is amiss with your bank, finding a useful employee on the phone is as likely as seeing a uniformed policeman patrolling your street. Banks devote huge effort to keeping account-holders at bay.
Nowadays, our main parties have developed the political version of “channel strategies”. True, they pay a lot of money for opinion-polling, but they nevertheless fail to put themselves in the shoes of those on whom their policies will be inflicted. Ministers ignore MPs. MPs do not scrutinise legislation. Those who have most influence over government are not voters, but pressure groups, “independent” public bodies, and even overseas organisations, particularly in relation to the environment.
That is how net zero policies were concocted. The public, on the whole, do care about the environment. It does not follow that they are ready – or even, in many cases, able – to manage the shocking new costs of decarbonisation imposed by an arbitrarily chosen deadline – electric vehicles, heat pumps, green regulation, let alone Ulez.
Speaking to the BBC in the wake of the by-election results, the Conservative party chairman, Greg Hands, criticised Ulez and said government must “go with the grain of human nature”. But then he ruined his own point by proudly reminding listeners that the Conservatives have vowed to phase out new petrol and diesel cars by 2030.
Mr Hands sees this now seven-year deadline as an example of subtle gradualism. Actually, it is borderline crazy to set a statutory date for banning the sale of one of the most successful inventions in human history. When the internal combustion engine can be improved upon as a means of affordable transport and clean energy, people will buy its replacement. They must not be forced to get one that is inefficient or unaffordable.
The year 2030 is not far off. At the next general election, motorists should ask Mr Hands and his Tory colleagues: “I need to buy a new car soon. Why will you be banning me from the one I can afford?” He will have no vote-winning answer. He should notice how net zero policies are cracking right across Europe, for democratic reasons.
Although the anger against car restriction is biggest in cities, there is comparable feeling in rural areas, where fuel and heating costs are huge and public authorities seem to regard potholes as green allies. In the Somerton and Frome, Selby and Ainsty campaigns, such issues featured. Farmers now make up a tiny number of voters, but taking rural seats for granted is a grave error. Look at what is happening in the Netherlands.
The dismal fact is that the Conservatives are bound, as a small minority of them positively like being, by the consequences of legislation like the Climate Change Act and – in the sphere of woke – the Equality Act. Even in the area of Brexit, which they achieved, they are badly hampered by the Northern Ireland Protocol. On immigration control, where Rishi Sunak really does want to make a difference, they shy off any challenge to the European Court of Human Rights.
On all matters which affect the consumer/citizen, Sir Keir Starmer is instinctively weak. He is big on human rights, but not so hot on human beings. His main political rhetoric is of finger-wagging disapproval, not of empathy with citizens, though he is clever enough to have worked a bit on this in recent speeches. Yet he will probably win because the Tories have let these issues, for which they used to have such feel, slip through their hands.
Unless Mr Sunak can outflank Labour on the side of the consumer over costs, taxes and controls, he will certainly lose. He should be the first leader in the Western world to say boo to the net-zero goose.
Politicians have adopted a tactic of the banking world, and developed ways to avoid speaking to the public