At the by-elections last week, the three main parties won one each, with a disappoint for the decent amongst us that the Tories held Uxbrige and South Ruislip. There is a big furore over the Labour campaign where the Tories and those close to Labour’s Leadership claiming that the Mayor’s ULEZ scheme lost it for Labour. Labour’s candidate had called for a suspension of its introduction and post election, Starmer also called for a re-think. I posted what I think on Labour Hub, which includes a poor understanding of what policy promises were required, which includes reassurance on climate change, public services investment and pay. Here are my notes and links …
Links
- https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/uxbridge-south-ruislip-ulez-expansion-sadiq-khan-conservative-labour/ which talks of Johnson’s announcement of ULEZ, but not the Government’s extortion in getting Khan to extend it and the timing of the extensions.
- Khan defends the policy and notes that all other cities in the UK get government subsidy for the scrappage.
It’s almost as if the Tories have trapped Kahn with a booby trap designed to go off in the re-election year.
- Sadiq Khan must ‘reflect’ on Ulez, Starmer says after Uxbridge loss, a litany of attacks by anonymous Labour sources on ULEZ in the Times (£)
- A twitter thread by Tanja Bueltmann , famously a German in Scotland, who argues that triangulating with the far right legitimises them and quotes the AfD’s rise in Germany.
- https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/b/labour-urged-pursue-positive-policies-tories-cling-boris-johnsons-old-seat
A Labour comrade from Birmingham writes,
I was part of a team that did this with the clean air zone in Birmingham. We faced all the same attacks from the Tories before it was brought in. It was in before the election and wasn’t a significant issue for us. If you are doing the right thing to improve air quality and improve people’s healthy lives, then do it. Delaying it means more people get ill and doesn’t even solve the political problem because the opposition will always say that you are going to do it.
Another issue about which people are more silent is the continuing evidence that many Indians are now voting Tory; one reason for this is their support for the Modi regime in India, criticised in Labour List. I was also curious about other significant ethnic minorities, here’s Hillingdon in tables, and with maps here’s London. , from Wikipedia.
I finish with two links on Labour Hub, and two from Skwawboc
- https://labourhub.org.uk/2023/07/21/learning-the-right-lessons-from-uxbridge/ by Caldebank
- https://labourhub.org.uk/2023/07/22/once-more-on-uxbridge/ by me where among other things I point out Starmer’s undermining of the campaign via his anti-green comments, and their refusal to call for an end to the pay disputes.
- https://skwawkbox.org/2023/07/21/starmer-costs-labour-dear-as-greens-drive-labour-by-election-flop-in-uxbridge-frome/ where he quotes Thangam Debbonaire as recognising that Uxbridge is hung parliament territory
A local voice writes in , “What went wrong in Uxbridge, a view from the CLP” on Labour List.
On ULEZ
The Tory Council’s attempts to halt ULEZ in the courts failed, as reported by the Mayor, City AM and Sky. Check out the Mayor’s site, the font is very large, “Landmark High Court win for Mayor means ULEZ expansion will go ahead“.
Equally interesting, Valent Projects, did some research on the twitter foot print of the anti-ULEZ campaign (or on twitter) and discovered that much of it was programmatic. I wonder if Facebook is as vulnerable?
Featured Image, Image: Uxbridge. Source: geograph.org.uk. Author: Nigel Cox, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.
I added a link to Norrette Moore’s article.