This is the news that the London mayor, Sadiq Khan, has expanded ULEZ to include all of London’s boroughs. Now every inch of the capital is an Ultra Low Emission Zone where those who drive the wrong kind of vehicle – petrol or diesel vehicles that do not meet minimum emissions standards – will have to pay £12.50 on every single day they get in the driver’s seat and go somewhere. Let’s be clear about what the rollout of ULEZ represents: it’s an entirely regressive tax that will punish the poor most severely. It is an eco-toll that will have little impact on the wealthy of Greater London who drive ‘polluting’ vehicles, for whom £12.50 is small fry, or who can afford a brand new EV and are exempt from the charge. But it will devastate the freedom of movement of the less well-off who drive old cars. This is a cruel levy enforced by an out-of-touch mayor on a citizenry already struggling to make ends meet.

The expansion of ULEZ is justified in the most apocalyptic terms. Where the rulers of England in the 1370s enforced a punitive poll tax on the peasantry on the basis that ‘the security of the realm was under threat’ – primarily from war with France – today the rulers of London impose a regressive eco-tax on certain motorists on the basis that the security of the entire planet is at risk. ULEZ is necessary because ‘the planet is burning’, commentators madly claim. As if bleeding pensioners with creaking cars of £12.50 a day is going to make any dent in global pollution. ‘People are dying, this will save lives’, says Green peer Jenny Jones. It reeks of emotional blackmail. Bristle at ULEZ and you’re in cahoots with death itself; you’re an enabler of respiratory disease and the much prophesied, but little evidenced, heat death of the planet.

[It’s coming to the US eventually, too. We are already seeing signs of this by the tightening of CAFE standards, and California has imposed its own standards for decades, but urban progressive enclaves will use the exact same justification to impose punitive taxes on non-EVs at some point. And they’ll use the same emotional blackmail, too. — Ed]