A miss as good as a mile

Yesterday's by-election result in Boris Johnson's former parliamentary seat of Uxbridge and South Ruislip should give Labour pause for thought. 

Their candidate, Danny Beale, just missed victory by 495 votes. Although this is quite impressive considering Boris Johnson held the seat for the Conservatives with a 7,210  majority, given the unpopularity of the Tory government and the disappointment of the local electorate with Johnson as their absentee MP,  Beale had a realistic hope of defeating Tory candidate, Steve Tuckwell, and taking the seat for Labour, if only narrowly. So what went wrong?

The issue that swung it was undoubtedly the unpopularity of Labour London Mayor, Sadiq Khan's controversial plan to extend the Ultra-Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) scheme from central areas of the capital throughout all of Greater London. The irony of this is that ULEZ was originally introduced by none other than former Conservative London Mayor, one Boris Johnson. The irony was, however, entirely lost on the Tories, who weaponised the issue against Beale. It seems that what was deemed essential for Central London isn't viewed as a panacea for the whole city, despite the alarming incidences of asthma and cardio-vascular deaths attributed to poor air quality across the capital.

Rather than unequivocally backing the principle of ULEZ whilst calling for a better scrappage deal from the government to compensate owners for replacing polluting vehicles, both Beale and his party leader, Sir Keir Starmer, dodged the issue by saying that now was not the right time. If not now, when, for God's sake? 

It is precisely this sort of mealy-mouthed prevarication, as seen in Starmer's outright refusal to support abandoning the government's pernicious two child benefit policy, or ever applying to rejoin the EU single market or customs union, that dismays Labour supporters and dissuades floating voters from supporting them. Far from looking pragmatic and sensible, it looks cowardly, disingenuous and opportunistic. And that's because it is.

The electorate has surely had enough weasel words from this disastrous government to last a lifetime and now wants honesty, especially over policies they may not agree with but whose merits they might be persuaded of by robust and compelling arguments in their favour. At the moment they feel they are being lied to simply in order to win their votes, after which the policy will be implemented anyway in a U-turn. They may have fallen for Johnson's Brexit schtick but they aren't complete suckers - and woe betide the politician who treats them as such!

Of course, the Conservative government has cynically engineered this situation by failing to support a Labour mayor's perfectly reasonable environmental plans by making funds available for a proper vehicle scrappage scheme. Just as they have consistently failed to support his transport policies with a parsimonious drip-drip approach to public transport infrastructure investment in the capital. If the Conservatives take London City Hall next May you can bet central government will turn on the funding tap fully for a Tory mayor ahead of a general election in October. Politically savvy no doubt but unpardonably cynical. Meanwhile, the city chokes and its citizens die

For Starmer, the imperative has to be to get elected in order to implement any policies at all. One understands the realpolitik of that, of course, and many will vote for him simply to get rid of an utterly discredited Tory government, while having little or no enthusiasm for his campaigning reticence. Maybe they will forgive him if he wins with a large enough majority to take more policy risks. This might necessitate some unashamed U-turns, which will lead to howls of synthetic outrage from the right, but Starmer will have five years to prove the efficacy of more radical policies. If he fails to adopt these, his chances of re-election, even of re-selection, will be slim. 

The Uxbridge result should be a wakeup call for Labour - but Starmer may have his earplugs in.

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