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Nobody really questions that ULEZ was a pivotal issue in the election in Uxbridge - even though the policy is popular with most Londoners.
Pundits this morning are predicting that the Tories may lean in to their attacks on Labour's green agenda, and Starmer may be panicked into sacking Ed Miliband and row back on his ambitions on green issues, due to last night's result there.
Certainly, unless the right lessons are drawn, the outcome in Johnson's former seat unquestionably risks a chilling effect on environmental policies that could set back progress towards Net Zero by years - something I warned could happen in my last post.
Here are my 4 quick takeaways from Uxbridge.
Investment in making clean alternatives accessible and affordable is now a prerequisite for many green policies surviving contact with reality.
As I wrote after France's Gilet Jaunes protests in 2018, the most effective green policies are not about taxing struggling households but about making clean technologies affordable, accessible and desirable to them.
It is very difficult to do this if you're not prepared to invest in schemes that do this.
Uxbridge, and other areas around London, were specifically prevented from accessing funding for diesel scrappage schemes by Ministers who presumably spied an opportunity to weaponise ULEZ to hurt Labour.
Billions of investment in buses and other public transport systems promised under Johnson have been axed by Sunak.
As Stephen Bush points out this morning, it doesn't matter that 9 out of 10 cars in places like Uxbridge are already ULEZ compliant - as Sadiq Khan's City Hall is keen to point out, or that Khan is laying on millions of km of extra bus routes, if people perceive that they will be hit financially and that the alternatives are inadequate… then they're not going to get on board.
This is as much a problem for Conservative critics of green investment as it is for Labour's own internal critics of the party's climate policies.
Many of the voices on both sides of the political aisle who are saying it is necessary to row-back on green investment are also saying that they do not support rowing back on climate and clean air targets.
In other words, they're wanting households to stop using polluting fuels for driving and heating but not wanting the government to help them with the up-front costs of deploying clean technologies to do this…. even when doing so ultimately saves both the households and the taxpayer money.
As the OBR put it last week: the cost to the public of not achieving Net Zero could be literally double the cost of achieving it.
Tories and Labour won't ditch the climate targets; but if they don't invest in making things like electric vehicles, buses, heat pumps, and diesel scrappage schemes available then they're building up public opposition to climate action.
This ultimately will fuel support for populist right wing protest parties, store up political trouble for themselves at elections, and put into jeopardy the future of progress on climate change.
Last night's result should therefore strengthen the political case for Rachel Reeves' proposals to invest in helping households and business, just as President Biden has done with his climate policy in the US.
It should also raise important questions of what the Conservatives' offer is to deliver their own Net Zero promises. How do the Tories think measures to reduce pollution should be paid for if not through windfall taxes on oil and gas companies?
A vote for the Greens was a vote against climate policy.
Had Green Party voters in Uxbridge voted for Labour, we wouldn't be having this debate this morning.
We in the climate movement need to make sure we don't do stupid shit.
Making sure the climate solutions we're promoting are affordable and accessible - and then persuading voters how they will work in practice to benefit them & be fairly paid for - is the entire job right now for us in the climate movement.
As 38 degrees polling shows, people are so sensitive to cost right now that if we can't show that progress can be achieved without raising household costs, we may as well just go home.
But the good news is climate policies can save people money, and can be fairly paid for.
So let's get on with it.
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What's front of mind with what's happening on climate change in the UK?
I think this right in aggregate, Joss, and it worries me that Labour is backing away from green fiscal/investment policy. As you know, Matthew L and I led arguments for this last time round, and the urgency wasn't quite as high then. But I do think there's an inordinate amount of crap being talked about the ULEZ and the biggest problem is that 'we've' failed to dial up the latent support for it. The biggest single group of voters on the ULEZ will be people who don't care much either way, but like all of us will benefit from clean air.