Ross Clark

UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres has declared that ‘the era of global warming has ended, the era of global boiling has arrived’. As if that were not enough, Guterres declared that ‘the air is unbreathable, the heat is unbearable’. Something is raging out of control but it isn’t the temperature: last week’s famous ‘heat domes’ have subsided, with only a few patches of southern Europe over 30ºC this afternoon. It is hyperbole over the climate. What does Guterres – who appeared to be breathing normally as he delivered his speech – hope to achieve by using language that tries to make out that life on Earth is no longer sustainable? We are in an arms race of extreme language, with everyone falling over each other to outdo each other.

The Uxbridge by-election has thrown Labour into a civil war, or at least a civil skirmish. Keir Starmer has told Sadiq Khan to think again on Ulez, and Khan has shown great reluctance to do so. But it has exposed a schism in the Conservatives, too. Yesterday, Rishi Sunak declared that efforts to reach the government’s net zero target should not be allowed to push up the cost of living for struggling families – leading some to predict that some policies, such as the ban on petrol and diesel cars from 2030, could be scrapped. This has brought out the Tories’ net zero enthusiasts to defend the target, even if it does cost households a great deal of money.

It was, to adapt the famous Sun headline from the 1992 general election, Ulez wot won it. The Conservatives’ narrow hold of Uxbridge and South Ruislip was, as Angela Rayner admitted this morning, down to London mayor Sadiq Khan’s dogged determination to inflict a £12.50 daily charge on the drivers of diesel cars more than seven years old and petrol cars more than 15 years old. It shouldn’t have taken much to work out that a highly-regressive tax on the relatively poor was not going to go down well among Labour voters – yet so blinded are many in the party on green issues that they just couldn’t see it. That includes Keir Starmer who two weeks ago told the obvious fib that Sadiq Khan had no choice but to expand Ulez.

Have you ever heard of Susan Hall? Until a month ago, I hadn't. Now that she has been selected as the Conservative candidate for next year’s London mayoral election, her name might well stick – although I am going to write it down somewhere just in case.  This isn't to disparage her abilities. Hall has, apparently, been leader of the Conservative party group in the London Assembly for the past four years – I don’t live in London, which may explain my ignorance. Before being elected a councillor in Harrow she was a mechanic in the family garage business and has also worked as a hairdresser – so she ought to have a connection with ordinary people which is lacking in so many of today’s MPs, many of whom have never had a job outside politics.

You could almost sense climate campaigners willing those thermometers in Sardinia to nudge into the unknown – a reading above 48.8°C would have marked a new European record and unleashed yet more forewarnings of climatic Armageddon.     But alas, they don’t appear to have got their way – at least not today. As of 6.30 p.m. the highest reported temperatures measured today were in the region of 45ºC, on Sardinia. There was a consolation prize in that the World Meteorological Organisation did finally verify the reading of 48.8ºC in Sicily made on 10 August 2021. Prior to that, the European record was established way back in 1977, which was beginning to look a little inconvenient for the narrative of an Earth which is ‘on fire’.

Rishi Sunak is not wrong to write, as he does in the Telegraph today, that too many young people are being ‘ripped off’ by poor-quality university courses, and that many would be better signing up for apprenticeships. But should a Conservative government really be threatening to tell the universities what to do? David Cameron’s tuition fee hike was meant to make discerning consumers out of university applicants. Rishi Sunak clearly thinks that’s failed. Cameron allowed universities to charge students tuition fees of up to £9,000 per year (since increased to £9,250). Universities would be able to charge full fees on good quality course, but find themselves having to reduce fees on lower quality courses, with poorer employment outcomes, if not cease offering them altogether.

Sometimes there is a problem so glaring that you wonder why no one is addressing it. Sooner or later, the government is going to have to deal with the black hole that will appear in the public finances as a result of the switch to electric cars. True, Jeremy Hunt has announced that electric cars registered from April 2025 onwards will have to pay road tax: £10 in their first year followed by £165 a year from then onwards. But that still leaves disappearing fuel duty. By 2030, according to Office of Budgetary Responsibility (OBR) calculations out today, that will deprive the Treasury of £13 billion a year in lost revenue. Eventually, the lost revenue could grow to £25 billion. Will the government be happy to forgo this income?

According to Cathryn Ross, Thames Water’s co-interim chief executive, householders with large gardens should be paying a higher price for their water than people with small or no gardens. Actually, they already almost certainly do. If they have a metered supply, their bills will be proportional to how much water they use – and will be bearing the full cost of watering the lawn or the flowerbeds. If they are unmetered they will be charged a rate that reflects the size of their property. If, on the other hand, Ross means that people who own large gardens should be paying a higher rate for each unit of water they use, it might make sense for monopolistic suppliers to suggest this, as it would raise more cash for them in the politically easiest way. But it is otherwise illogical.