This was “crime week” on the Tory grid, but the party of law and order is no more. Tories now do like dictators, passing draconian laws against the freedom to protest but flouting them for protesters of their own political ilk.
Self-styled “blade runners” claim to have so far destroyed 600 cameras of the 3,000 needed to enforce the new Ulez – ultra-low emission zone – now covering all of Greater London. The Mail, Telegraph and Sun have been whooping up the actions of “Captain Gatso” and his balaclavaed vandals as they tear down cameras and cut cables. The Sun reports anti-Ulez exploits along with its “Give Us A Brake campaign to slow down the government’s ruinous race to net zero”. The Telegraph quotes a vigilante describing his night-time vandalism as “unpaid voluntary work for the community”.
This is what protesters do when they find no better way to alert the public to their cause, accepting the consequences if caught. But from suffragettes blowing up letter boxes to Extinction Rebellion (XR) spilling black paint outside the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, property damage is always roundly condemned by elected politicians.
So it’s dumbfounding for senior Tory politicians at Westminster and in local authorities to encourage acts of criminal damage.Iain Duncan Smith says he backs “a lot of people in my constituency [who] have been cementing up cameras and putting plastic bags over them. I am happy for them to do it because they are facing an imposition that no one wants and they have been lied to about it … People have had enough.”
It is hard to remember an MP of any party exhorting, inciting or even praising criminal damage, let alone a former cabinet minister and (easy to forget) a former Conservative party leader. Raj Chada, a solicitor specialising in protest, who has defended protesters in movements including Black Lives Matter, Colston Must Go, XR and Just Stop Oil, says he knows of no Labour MP ever advocating criminal damage. I sat in court beside John McDonnell a few years ago as we were both character witnesses for a group of climate protesters, both of us describing their non-violent peaceful protest, contrary to the prosecution case. But just imagine if McDonnell ever gave an interview calling on his constituents to rise up and smash public property.
Duncan Smith is not alone. The newly elected MP for Uxbridge and South Ruislip, Steve Tuckwell, has been an administrator for Facebook groups urging more people to join in Ulez camera destruction – groups hosting racist abuse of Sadiq Khan, such as “he hates our way of life thats why he’s destroying London along with his muslim friends in County Hall”. When the Evening Standard contacted Conservative head office, Tuckwell rapidly withdrew from the group. A string of Tory council leaders have been administrators of similar anti-Ulez sites.
A line is crossed when democratically elected politicians rouse people to disobey democratically made laws. That’s something the left has not always understood when raging at Labour MPs failing to join protests that might tip into illegality. So it is breathtaking to find Duncan Smith, law-and-order tough guy, punisher of any benefit claimant who misses an appointment, openly calling for protesters to commit criminal damage, after voting through ferocious new anti-protester laws designed to frighten off demonstrators. Remember, two Just Stop Oil protesters are in jail – for three years and two years seven months – for climbing on to a bridge and disrupting traffic. Yet now, some Conservative MPs are saying that police resources are being used to investigate “attacks on Ulez cameras rather than more serious crimes”. I don’t recall them saying the police wasted time prosecuting climate protesters.
Incidentally, Duncan Smith told GB News that Ulez “is a fund-raiser that will damage the lives of people, particularly the poor”. Ah, “the poor”! Who owe so much to his hostile ministrations. Watch out for frequent Tory crocodile tears for poor people to resist net-zero actions. (They never suggest making them less poor.) London’s dirty air harms the poorest people most: they are least likely to own cars and are disproportionately represented among those whose premature deaths are contributed to by air pollution – 4,000 Londoners in 2019 alone.
Watch the Tories make Ulez their testing ground for the general election: cleaner and greener versus the great British motorist. Will it work? YouGov finds nearly a third of Londoners back Ulez camera vandals. But the Ulez policy itself has a net support of five percentage points across London as a whole. Look at the marked difference between inner London, where Ulez is well bedded in and supported by 62% of people, and outer London, where 51% oppose it. That suggests that once Ulez has been running a while, people forget the lies told about it. In Uxbridge Tories raised fears that everyone would pay, but voters will find only one in 10 vehicles affected, with scrappage grants for most people. Outer Londoners will find good effects: nitrogen dioxide levels along roads are 21% lower in inner London and 46% lower in central London than they would have been without the Ulez.
Here is Allister Heath, the editor of the Sunday Telegraph, very excited at finding a new cause, now that Brexit is dying of its own delusions: “The mayor’s nasty, vindictive Ulez cash grab has triggered a wave of French-style civil disobedience, radicalised an outer suburbia that the snooty inner London elite had long forgotten even existed.” Can revving up a motorists’ revolution do what Brexit did before? This may only appeal to Torydom’s basest base, male and violent in tone. The country ranks the climate high among its top concerns, Ipsos finding it actually jumped 13 points in August, putting it at third place, with immigration fifth.
If the Tories make green the turf of the next election, bring it on. Labour will embrace it because net zero is right and goes with the grain of most opinion. And, as Napoleon said, never interrupt your enemy when they are making a mistake.
• This article was amended on 3 September 2023. An earlier version said that the Ulez scrappage grants scheme was available to all residents of London. In fact, the vehicle must be registered at the applicant’s address with the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency on or before 30 January 2022.
Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist
