Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives on Friday suffered two crushing UK parliamentary by-election defeats but averted a “3-0” drubbing by unexpectedly holding on to Boris Johnson’s old Uxbridge seat.
The grave problems facing the British prime minister were highlighted when the opposition Labour party secured its biggest-ever by-election win in the once-safe Tory seat of Selby and Ainsty in Yorkshire.
Earlier the centrist Liberal Democrats demolished a massive Tory majority to win the seat of Somerton and Frome, opening up a dangerous new front for Sunak in the Tory heartlands of England’s South West.
ULEZ expansion is going to be a dead-albatross around the neck of the tories, imho.
They have the largest percentage of voters who are against it, but there still aren’t enough internally for them to nail their underpants to the mast on cancellation. So when it comes time to implement, or not implement, they’re damned if they do or don’t.
If they do end up with the power to make the call, I absolutely expect them to drag their feet until a few more opponents have upgraded their vehicles/died from shortened lifespans due to emissions.
It seems like an enormous non-issue. Most cars meet the standard just fine.
Even my boss’s massive diesel Fall Guy truck meets it.
What they (and Labour) should do is make a purely cosmetic change, push back implementation by six months and scream about it. The ULEZ already won’t affect most of the people who voted against it, we just need to do literally anything that makes them realise that!
Didn’t central government demand and then cancel a Manchester low emissions zone after Andy Burnham had spent all the money on it? Surely that’s what they plan to do - nothing until the last minute after Sadiq Khan has spent all the money, then cancel it from on high.