The Manufacture of Dissent

Martin Kettle in the Guardian thinks that "Ulez reveals a systemic problem with how UK government works – or rather, doesn’t". As the lede summarises his argument, "Most people want cleaner air and a better NHS, but partisan politics gets in the way. To bridge the gap, we need citizens’ assemblies." The reason why centrists advocate citizens' assemblies is the expectation that they will inevitably deliver centrist outcomes, but it should be obvious that they only do this where there is first of all a political commitment to reform and enough of a cross-party consensus to ensure legitimacy for the outcome (e.g. in the case of Ireland's abortion reforms). The idea that partisan politics stands in the way of a better NHS has surely been disproved by history. On the contrary, the problem has been a cross-party consensus (for all but a few years) that the service must be reformed through marketisation and the greater involvement of private healthcare companies. What stands in the way is not partisanship but the cartel, and for that reason there will never be a citizens' assembly on the NHS.

On the specific issue of cleaner air for Londoners, Kettle claims that "In principle, people support action, provided the measures seem sensible, appropriate and fair, and that adequate preparation is made for the transition. It is clear this did not happen over the extension of Ulez. The upshot is that measures that would and could have secured sustained public backing, as well as being of public benefit, have become needlessly contested and at risk of being derailed. That failure is the result of our political system." This is misleading both on the scheme's introduction and the claim that it has become "needlessly contested". The original ULEZ scheme was announced by the then Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, in 2015 and was set to cover the same area as the congestion charge zone in 2020. In the event, it was introduced earlier by the new Mayor, Sadiq Khan, in 2019. In 2021, the ULEZ area was extended to the North and South Circular roads. It was estimated that this would impact 140,000 vehicles. The further expansion to all 32 boroughs this year is expected to impact a further 40,000 vehicles. The plans have been widely publicised and remain popular across London as a whole.

To suggest that anything is "needlessly contested" is patronising, implying that there is a predefined agenda for politics. This is the same sort of thinking that imagines a citizens' assembly would produce common-sense consensus and mutual respect, rather than antagonism. If you put an angry outer borough van driver in the same room as an inner borough parent with an asthmatic child, you're not necessarily going to get consensus. One feature of genuine political contest, as opposed to polite disagreement, is the willingness to defy the law and it was predictable that on the issue of ULEZ the Tories should have suddenly become defiant. The party of law and order has always been happy to indulge law-breaking and disorder, while the rightwing press has frequently campaigned explicitly for both. This should not surprise us in the least, any more than the Labour Party's consistent commitment to both upholding the law and rejecting activism as unhelpful. That the current party leader is a former chief prosecutor is incidental though emblematic. But why has ULEZ become such a contested issue?

Phil Burton-Cartledge sees the protests in the context of petit bourgeois politics, employing the frame outlined by Dan Evans's book, A Nation of Shopkeepers: The Unstoppable Rise of the Petite-Bourgeoisie. "Looking at mobilisations of the petit bourgeoisie in the 21st century, there is a certain commonality to them. Whether it was the petrol protests in 2000 or the Countryside Alliance demonstrations a year later, the Fathers 4 Justice stunts, and latterly the cocktail of Covid conspiracism, 15 minute cities, and now ULEZ what they all have in common is the perception the state, or rather a busybody and overly managerial section of the state is getting in the way, professing to know better than them, and is stopping them from doing as they please." His purpose in this is to highlight the dangers that such political ressentiment may present an authoritarian and managerial Labour government, despite Keir Starmer showing every sign that he instinctively sympathises with petit bourgeois politics as much as he respects the dignity of the state.

But there are a couple of problems in this analysis relating to scale and persistence. The Fathers for Justice stunts will never enjoy widespread support, but their specificity also means they will continue at the margins of society: there is an endless supply of divorced dads who imagine the state is a misandrist conspiracy. In contrast, the Countryside Alliance is a substantial organisation, though it's pretty obvious that the bulk of its support comes from field sport enthusiasts rather than smallholders and agricultural workers. It isn't a reactionary spasm by the petit bourgeosie that will burn itself out but an astroturf organisation for large landowners and second-homers that will likely persist long into the future. The same cannot be said for Covid conspiracism, which has already ceded priority among the far-right to anti-drag queen protests. Likewise, the 15-minute city demonstrations appear to have petered out already, while the anti-ULEZ protests haven't mustered more than a few score attendees so far (of course, this may change, particularly if the 15-minute crowd shifts attention). 

The question is, how do such isolated and marginal protests take on the appearance of mass movements, if only temporarily? The answer is media coverage. Consider this from the Telegraph: "Protesters descended on Whitehall on Tuesday to demand that the expansion of Sadiq Khan’s ultra-low emission zone (Ulez) be scrapped. Dozens of campaigners waved placards with messages such as “stop the toxic air lie”, and mocked-up car registration plates reading: “get Khan out”." (my emphasis). One reason why the Countryside Alliance has prospered over the years is that it has enjoyed disproportionate and sympathetic support from newspapers such as the Times and Telegraph. One reason why ULEZ has become a political issue is that those same papers have shifted from supporting what was originally a Conservative Party policy, encouraged by Grant Shapps as Secretary of State for Transport as recently as 2020, to outright opposition. 

The reason for that shift was the presumed political utility of ULEZ as a wedge issue in the Uxbridge and South Ruislip by-election in July. That Labour's vote increased and the Tories' fell, making a seat previously considered safe enough for a sitting Prime Minister into a tight marginal, was taken not as evidence that the electorate increasingly favours cleaner air but that Sadiq Khan had somehow managed to lose Labour a shoo-in. This was a framing shared both by the jubilant Tory press and by the Labour leadership, and it was notable that both promptly extended the critique beyond ULEZ to green policies more generally. While Labour remains officially committed to Net Zero and cleaning up the environment, it has made it clear that this will not trump its commitment to economic growth, and I suspect that it considers indulging sole traders with polluting vans to be a contribution to the latter.

The Tories can be accused of reckless opportunism in deciding that "green crap" is the dividing line on which to fight the next election, not least because they will inevitably be drawn towards starker opposition in order to accentuate the differences between themselves and Labour. They haven't got much else to offer. With Rishi Sunak's attempts to rebrand the party as competent managers of the economy going slowly nowhere, and with Labour having successfully closed off most avenues of attack by reneging on their promises and insisting that they would stick to Tory spending plans, it was always likely that the coming general election would focus on the cost-of-living when not distracted by penises and censorious students. The question of who should bear the cost of the Net Zero transition is actually quite a cunning one because Labour simply will not admit that the cost should be borne immediately by the state but funded over time by increased taxes on wealth.

Both Martin Kettle and Phil Burton-Cartledge see the anti-ULEZ protests as an organic product of popular dissent, the one the regrettable result of the failure of partisan politics to provide leadership, the other an expression of social anxiety by an innately hysterical class. But I think both are wrong. In the normal course of events, the expansion to the outer boroughs would have produced grumbling, limited compromise and a few upsets in local council ward elections. What has turned it into a cause célèbre is the salience decreed by the media, which predominantly means the Tory newspapers, and while that is partly about helpfully crafting a wedge for the Conservative Party, it is also about protecting what they consider to be their own interests, or more accurately the interests of their owners and their owners' class. It was always likely that capital would drag its heels even once the imperative of climate change became indisputable, and it was equally likely that this would eventually take the form of popular resistance to an overweening state. And if that resistance doesn't naturally arise, it will be cultivated.