A few weeks ago I was doing a talk to a group of headteachers, running through each of the big challenges a new Labour government will have to deal with – from increases in child poverty, to the collapse of local government, and a broken special needs system.
A welcome piece of positivity for Easter Sunday. Thanks, Sam.
One more for consideration.
Decouple the pricing of electricity from the international wholesale cost of gas so that electricity prices reflect the not insignificant input from renewables. This would make people better off without spending UKGov money and prove popular given the fact that most people recognise they are being ripped off. It would also begin to restore some trust in a government working for the people, not against them.
Unfortunately it's an economic reality that the market price of a commodity is set by the costs of the marginal provider (not the average provider). Which in electricity is gas.
You can only "decouple" the electricity price from gas with either a massive implicit or explicit Government subsidy or significant investment into new power plants/storage.
I like your selection criteria, Sam. I would suggest adding a few more to prioritise, all built on the premise that the Labour Party needs to learn lessons from the Biden administration’s problems in how to tackle a defeated hard-right party:
1. Give heart to your supporters. Each policy needs to please your support base, and improve their morale
2. Send a message to your opponents that you are unafraid to use your power. Timidity from Biden’s administration on key topics provided Republicans with a breathing space and a sense that they would go further in pursuit of long term power than Biden ever would. For example, Biden did not change the Supreme Court’s size, treating it as fixed, despite it having changed many times in the past and for a lot less reason. Ceding this ground was a disaster. Labour will have a big, possibly huge, majority. If they govern as though it’s slim, it will do them no favours
3. Expose the breadth and depth of the squalid and incompetent nature of Tory decision-making, so that the idea of having them back in power becomes more and more repugnant. This is coupled to #2 above, of course, but where that is about ensuring that opponents do not regroup, this is about ensuring the polity stays with you
4. As a whole, try to cover the full range of government, especially (a) public services and (b) governance
With that in mind, I’d suggest adding the following, some of which do cost some money:
1. Justice: Create a fresh compensation scheme for subpostmasters and have it pay out within three months, with absolutely minimal paperwork
2. Transport: institute a fresh EV transition timetable that includes 2030 but also covers commercial vehicles, and institute a bunch of cost-neutral incentive schemes to get there. Do it by fiat and then put it into legislation at leisure, so it becomes hard to unpick. Do it in a way that gets the motor industry saying how happy they are to have stability restored
3. Transport & local government: change the rules to allow councils autonomy over LTNs and similar decisions. Do it in a way that gets them singing your praises
4. Energy: run a new CfD as quickly as possible, but rebuilt to be sane and actually drive large scale off and on shore wind and storage. This used to work and was deliberately broken — it can be fixed. Get some headlines about how wind is growing once again — wind is very popular including when built in local areas. Coupled to this…
5. Energy: change planning requirements so that councils can permit large scale solar / wind / battery easily with a payback to local communities, without the ability for one person to block
6. Housing: set up a Street Votes scheme, a la Sam Bowman. What Gove supposedly wanted to do but hasn’t actually done
7. Media: announce new terms for the BBC’s Charter Review that ensure its future as a public service broadcaster
8. Media: do what it takes with Ofcom to ensure GBNews abides by the rules it currently ignores.
9. Health: put the procurement scandal papers relating to PPE into the public domain. Invite open source analysis. Unearth the links. Set up the public inquiry into this. Implement new rules including “no contract shall be won by a company owned by an unabashed racist”
I’m sure there’s a ton more. With a lot of these issues, the challenge will be to act at speed, during the honeymoon, before the Tories can regroup in any way, and despite the lack of capacity of the civil service. That requires a focus on the end goal, driving through the detail and not allowing it to bog things down, and pushing straight past vested interests. All of that is tough, but a big majority is truly game changing and lots of currently noisy voices will be irrelevant as soon as the election is won (and may stay that way if Labour acts fast enough)
10. Governance: ban all individual donations of more than £1m to a party. Ban anyone donating £100k+ from getting a gong for three years. These will be low impact for Labour, but cause further headaches for the Tories, as well as being populist and frankly also the right thing to do.
In practice what that would mean is that the political parties would then be state funded. So the current political settlement (2 big parties and a number of much smaller ones) would be set in stone and parties would seek to manipulate the funding mechanism (see the SNP rush to have audited accounts in order to get ‘short’ money).
Parties should live or die based on votes and people’s desire to fund them
Or all parties received the same and were subject to the same limits thus creating no value in spending more. Like a snap election, no campaigning, the electorate receives thru the door one booklet with every manifesto andvthen decision is made on that and past performance
They recieve 'short' funds dependant on number of MPs (or MSPs).
I think we should start with enforcing spending limits that already exist.
For example the Greens near where I live frankly massively break the law on campaign spending to support Caroline Lucas (quite what they are scared of given the LibDems and Labour basically stand aside, although Labour are not this time as it's a target seat).
They flood the constituency with activists, posters and so on but claim they spend less than 15K! But of course they are held to a different moral standard......
All governments that have been in office too long become corrupted - populated by chancers and spivs on the make. The previous Labour government was riddled with it as is the current Tory one.
The previous Labour government quite openly traded honours for cash and ‘soft’ loans which led to the resignation of Blair some 8 months or so later post Police investigation/whitewash. What’s the difference?
I disagree with your interpretation of what happened at the end of the previous Labour government. In particular, I think the levels of corruption have seen since Johnson became PM have been vastly worse than anything under New Labour. I abhor the notion of “a plague on your all houses” / “they’re all as bad as each other”. It elides critically important differences. And anyway — my suggested policy would *prevent* any trading of honours for cash by a Labour government just as it would for a future Tory government, so it is the very opposite of partisan in that respect!
Sorry I’m an equal opportunity hater. The last Labour government was utterly corrupt and Lord Levy quite openly sold honours for cash. Mandelson quite openly helped his billionaire chums and is extremely wealthy - sources unclear.
It is utterly partisan to describe them as anything other.
They are all the same. Happens to all governments that have been in office too long.
I meant individuals. There is a clear problem of corruption that is entirely to do with individuals. I would frame it in that way. There will be complaints and possibly a JR, but I think it could be constructed in such a way as to work. It requires boldness rather than timidity:
- Relishing the inevitable attacks because the counter-attacks are so juicy, politically: “look at the corrupt Tories, defending the right of ex-KGB spies to buy seats in the Lords, and bunging knighthoods to their mates in return for cash” etc
- Being willing to give up the (relatively few) large donations from individuals that may come to Labour in the future in return for making politics much much harder for the Tories
And yes, partisan. But the argument is simply: the corruption of today is itself partisan, as well as being corrupt
No problem. Do you mean individuals or corporations?
If you attack the majority of Tory political funding but leave Labour’s union funding intact that is a partisan attack and would lose the consequent judicial review. In addition the previous Labour government took a lot of money from individual donations ……
"2. Transport: institute a fresh EV transition timetable that includes 2030 but also covers commercial vehicles, and institute a bunch of cost-neutral incentive schemes to get there. Do it by fiat and then put it into legislation at leisure, so it becomes hard to unpick. Do it in a way that gets the motor industry saying how happy they are to have stability restored"
Given that trust in government is low, how would this suggested policy of doubling down on electric vehicles increase trust in government?
EVs are mostly outside the price range of what the average consumer can afford. What about the charging station issue? What is the point of pushing forward on EVs if the charging stations are not powered by renewable, non-greenhouse sources of energy?
Japanese and American car makers are backing off EVs. Japan, for sometime, has put their efforts into hybrids, not EVs.
Contrary to being popular, pushing forward "by fiat" on EVs would certainly repel voters away from the Labour Party.
1. Trust in government is low in the automotive industry because the government moved what appeared to be a fixed timetable for EV transition. Thus, reverting to the prior timetable, clarifying it, and locking it in place provides the automotive industry with the policy certainty they have been demanding. It also ensures that stronger consumer incentives exist to switch, which better lines up with the mandatory sales mix that automakers must achieve (22% this year).
2. Cost neutral incentives are just that: incentives. They make it more enticing to consumers to switch by, for example, lowering upfront costs (running costs are already much lower).
3. EVs are of course primarily a new car purchase. All new cars are outside the affordability of the “average” consumer. But prices are dropping and will continue to drop further — eg the Dacia Spring, on sale new for £15k. And many EVs will become cheaper this year for a whole bunch of reasons relating to price pressures.
4. There is no charging station issue. There is a *perceived* charging station issue, perceived by non-EV drivers. It starts with a misunderstanding of demand for public charging, with an assumption that EVs use public chargers at the same rate that ICE cars use petrol stations. In fact, a large majority of EVs are almost never charged at a public station, and this will always be the case, because 70%+ of UK cars are parked off-street and can thus be charged domestically (and large numbers of others can be charged in work car parks, and even more using lamp-post charging on residential streets, etc). There’s also a misunderstanding that EVs need to be charged each night. In fact, they need to be charged about once a fortnight on average (given typical 250 mile range and average UK daily distance driven of 20 miles)
5. EVs are largely powered by low carbon electricity (70% over the course of a year) and the mix is lower carbon each and every year. But even if they were powered on gas and coal, they’d still use the fuel more efficiently than ICE, they’d still remove tailpipe emissions from areas where people live, and they’d still cut noise (and the morbidity and mortality associated with noise). The fact that on top of all that, they also cut carbon is really a demonstration of just why they’re so compelling from an ecological perspective compared to ICE vehicles
7. While Japanese and (some) US OEMs are backing away, Chinese and Korean and European manufacturers are all doubling down.
8. You may not like EVs, but EVs are overall extremely popular including with non-EV drivers, and becoming ever more so
"4.I would suspect that only a tiny fraction of households in the UK have their own solar panels or wind generators. Without that, power to charge EVs ultimately comes from the grid. As of 2022, in the UK, wind generated power accounts for 26.8% of generation, solar accounts for 4.4%, and hydroelectric accounts for 1.8%. So, in total, only 33% of power in the UK is generated from non-greenhouse gas emitting sources. The same CO2/methane reduction could be achieved from driving a high miles to the gallon hybrid. For instance, the Toyota Corolla is rated as achieving 65 miles to the gallon on the highway.”
Why use 2022 figures? Rolling 12 month figures are readily available eg on Iamkate.com. And your figures are wrong even on their own account anyway, as you assumed that there only two categories are renewables and fossil fuels, when the third category is nuclear, which is also zero carbon. For the last 12 month rolling period, only 1.1% of the UK’s electricity mix was coal, and another 32.2% was gas. The rest was all low or zero carbon: 10% via interconnectors from eg France and Norway, 31% wind, 5% solar, 1% hydro, 14% nuclear, and 6% biomass (plus a tiny bit of pumped storage). So the grid mix is greener than you said, it’s greener than it was in 2022, and it will get greener and greener in future years. But anyway — even if the grid mix were 100% gas, it would still be greener than burning your petrol in your car, because that’s an inefficient process compared to burning gas in an industrial turbine and electric motors are about 4x as efficient in miles per unit of energy in moving the car. Plus it means removing all that pollution from population centres. You cannot get anywhere close to the same mpge equivalent in a Toyota Corolla hybrid. For example, the Model 3 gets 131 mpge, ie it’s twice as efficient as your Toyota Corolla hybrid. And that’s in the US, where the grid mix is dirtier. The well-to-wheel carbon intensity studies have demonstrated this conclusively.
“My issue with charging stations is not that there might not be enough of them or that it takes a long time to charge. My issue is that charging stations are usually powered from natural gas turbines or the grid, both of which have a large CO2/methane footprint.”
You’re just plain wrong on this again. Using the grid as a source of energy to move a vehicle is dramatically lower in carbon footprint than burning petrol, even when it’s a Toyota Corolla hybrid.
"5. EVs are largely powered by low carbon electricity (70% over the course of a year) and the mix is lower carbon each and every year . . ."
Sight source. I doubt that this correct. The dominant source of CO2/methane free electricity in the UK is wind. There is likely a limit to how much wind generating capacity can be built. See, for instance, here:
It’s “cite” not “sight. And there are literally dozens of sites out there on the internet that show you the annual grid mix for the UK The National Grid provides free data, and they all cut it up slightly differently. I mentioned Iamkate above, but here’s another source for you:
You will see there that the UK a smidgeon under 70% of its electricity from low carbon sources in the last 12 months, just as I said. You can doubt all you like, but the data is there if you are willing to look at it.
i don’t know what you saw in that article that made you think there was some kind of “limit to how much wind generating capacity can be built”. The UK has nearly 100GW of wind generating capacity in the pipeline — twice the amount that the government said it was targeting in the 2022 energy strategy.
The wind is there for us to use if we have the political will. NB, this pipeline is dominated by offshore, too, so it’s not really down to NIMBYism. It’s down to an idiot government who stuffed up the CfD regime because they lack the will (or more accurately, are actively willing the slowdown of renewables buildout in favour of fossil projects, because that appeases their founders and makes the remaining old gimmers who still support them happy).
“To be clear, I am not against EVs. But I think the fervour of the all EV crowd needs to be confronted with reality and be brought back to the central matter at hand: we need to significantly reduce the CO2 and methane footprint without incurring other environmental costs and without destroying the economy.”
You’re not going to convince anyone when you don’t know the basic facts:
- You thought batteries have to be replaced at 200k miles, when they don’t
- You thought only 33% of UK electricity comes from low carbon sources when it’s actually 70% (and rising)
- You thought most EVs sold in the UK were big and heavy, when they’re not especially bigger or heavier than the best selling ICE vehicles
- You thought driving a Toyota Corolla hybrid that got 65mpg was lower carbon than driving an EV, when a Model 3 in the US gets twice the mpge and even higher in the UK with our greener grid mix
Etc
If you’re really really fussed about reducing carbon intensity, then the answer is always to support policies that encourage as much modal shift to active and public transport as possible, plus EVs to decarbonise the remaining journeys.
Nuclear energy is highly problematic in that the long term waste disposal issue has not been solved. Even if you include nuclear energy in the mix of so called zero emission sources of energy, the total of wind, solar, nuclear and hydroelectric is less than 50%. (Natural gas powered turbines are not emission free.)
In any case, I suspect that you will breathlessly respond yet again, without really thinking about the actual problem at hand.
*Nothing* is 100% free of emitting greenhouse gases. But biomass is a low carbon power source. You’re no doubt thinking that it’s not because CO2 is emitted when it’s burned. But that is to misunderstand what makes fossil fuels problematic: they contain sequestered carbon accumulated over billions of years. And anyway, biomass is obviously only a small percentage of the UK grid mix — it’s just one of many low carbon sources that you didn’t manage to include in your estimate. And you keep getting your maths wrong. The only high carbon sources of power that the UK used in the last twelve months were coal (1.1%) and gas (32.2%). 1.1 + 32.2 = 33.3% fossil fuel. 100 = 33.3 = 66.6% non high carbon power. That was 6% biomass + 14% nuclear + 5% solar + 31% wind. And you have conveniently assumed that all the power from the interconnectors was high carbon. But that power came from Norway (mainly hydro), France (mainly nuclear), Denmark (mainly wind) and Belgium (mainly a mix of wind, solar and nuclear). So it was largely low carbon — probably 80% or more.
Obviously I’m going to respond again, because you are getting it wrong again. The problem *I* opened this discussion with was how to incentivise the decarbonisation of the UK’s car fleet by using cost neutral incentives for EVs in a consistent policy framework. You’ve said this is a bad idea and attempted to set out why, and each time I point out that you’ve got your facts wrong, you raise a new sub-topic and get new facts wrong. And not once have you said “oh, actually I didn’t know that the data was available on the UK grid mix” because you’re too busy focused on defending an indefensibly wrong position such as “70% of the UK’s electricity is high carbon” and this leads you into absurdities such as ignoring nuclear and biomass or saying EV batteries need replacement after 200k miles, based on nothing more than some half remembered stuff you read somewhere from Rowan Atkinson or some other person with a shaky grasp of the facts. It’s fun watching you contort yourself, but it’s not very dignified. You could always stop, or admit that this is a topic on which you’re not as well versed as you think you are. Better yet, you could spend your time reading some of Auke Hoekstra’s prolific writings debunking myths about EVs with an open mind, and see what you learn from that.
"Buildings account for about 17% of the UK's greenhouse gas emissions, mainly due to burning fossil fuels for heating."
"The UK has some of the least energy-efficient homes in Europe. Insulation is one of the most effective ways to reduce emissions from housing, by reducing the energy needed for heating."
"in September 2023, the government cancelled regulations that would have required landlords to improve the energy efficiency of private rented homes."
"there has been "little progress" switching to lower carbon modes of travel, such as public transport. "
"Flying makes up about 7% of overall UK emissions"
"The UK has a strategy for delivering net zero aviation by 2050."
"It has been criticised for relying too much on technologies such as sustainable fuels and zero emissions aircraft that do not yet exist."
"As a result, the CCC says that the government should be looking at how to manage demand rather than allowing it to grow - for example addressing private jet use and providing lower cost rail travel."
"Overall, renewables outperformed fossil fuels for a third year by generating 47.3% of the UK’s electricity, another new annual record (up from 41.5% in 2022), compared to 36.3% from oil, gas and coal – a record annual low from fossil fuels (which produced 40.8% in 2022) – most of which came from gas (34.3% in 2023)."
So, as I said in a previous comment, less than 50% of UK's electricity is derived from renewables, even this past year.
What percentage of cars in the UK are EVs? Probably less than 5%. Wind, nuclear and solar will not be able to be scaled up to meet the car driving capacity of the UK if everyone is driving an EV.
Furthermore, wind is variable throughout the day. To balance the varying load on the grid, electricity generators have to use combined cycle natural gas turbines, which can quickly be tuned to match the rise and fall of wind generation. So unless storage can be dramatically increased, the wind to combined cycle natural gas turbine proportions of electricity generation will probably not change that much. For instance, it is unlikely that the UK could generate 60% of its power from wind and 20% from combined cycle natural gas turbines.
Note: I haven't insulted your "maths" ability (newsflash: this is arithmetic) or your basic intelligence. I also haven't bafflegabbed you with a lot of extraneous detail.
As I said in a previous comment, the mix of true low greenhouse gas sources of energy will probably reach a limit. Hybrids have their place along with EVs. The auto industries in Japan and the US seem to be cluing into this. Perhaps the UK will not. But then again, it's not as if the UK is a leading manufacturer of cutting edge automobile technology. It doesn't really matter in the broader sense if the UK strangles its economy with too aggressive EV adoption policies that, in the end, will not achieve "net zero".
“In regard to the EV rollout, I doubt that trust is government is low only due to a change in the timetable for EV transition. Comments from early adopters of EVs (Rowan Atkinson's comments, for instance) have contributed to a public skepticism about EVs as well as skepticism about what governments are telling the public about EVs.”
I said the *automotive industry’s trust in government* was low. You have talked about negative press affecting consumer confidence. That is a different issue.
"Cost neutral incentives are not truly cost neutral as they do not compensate consumers for the cost of battery replacement. On an EV, battery replacement usually needs to occur before an EV has 200,000 miles on it. The cost of battery replacement can easily exceed 20,000 pounds. By comparison, many conventional gas powered vehicles are still on the road with over 200,000 miles on them. The cost of a conventional engine replacement (including labour) is usually less than 10,000 pounds.”
A cost neutral incentive does not mean what you think it means. It means that there is no overall impact to HMG finances (ie net neutral for tax and spending). It has nothing to do with the impact on individuals. Obviously for individuals, an incentive needs to be an incentive, so it needs to cut a cost. But it doesn’t need to cut all costs to zero: that’s not what cost neutral incentives means. You just haven’t understood the economic term. You also have your facts wildly, utterly, and completely wrong about EV battery life. EV batteries don’t fail after 200k miles. After somewhere between 500 and 1500 charge-discharge cycles, range will be at about 80% of the original. But this is what those calculations look like for, say, a new MG4 SE LR:
- Range is 280 miles new
- After 1000 full charge-discharge cycles, range will then be around 80%
- 80% of 280 miles is 224 miles. That is still a more than good enough range for many people and absolutely doesn’t imply the battery needs to be replaced
- When will the car be at 1000 cycles? 260 is the rough halfway point between 280 and 220. 1000*260 = 260,000 miles. Well north of 200k, and no-one expects a car with 260k miles on the clock to be exactly as good as new. After all, given the average UK car drives 18 miles a day, that car would be *40 years old*. So you can see that worrying about a battery replacement is completely silly. It’s an issue for decades from now, by which time prices will have dropped massively, range will have increased greatly, and the car will probably be ready for scrap anyway (except the battery materials can be salvaged and reused in static applications, which you can’t do with a 40 year old engine)
“In my observation, drivers of EVs are tending toward heavier more expensive vehicles. The reason? Heavier more expensive EVs can carry a larger batter and have longer range. These heavier more expensive vehicles with their larger lithium batteries impose a cost on infrastructure in that heavier vehicles impose more wear on roads. Lithium mining is not conflict free or environmentally impact free. My point is not to dismiss EVs outright, but to suggest that many people could achieve an equivalently lower CO2 footprint by driving a small hybrid (Toyota Corolla hybrid, for example) rather than a large, heavy, expensive EV.”
Your observation is flat out wrong. The best selling EVs in the UK are the Model Y (<2 tons despite being an SUV), Model 3 (1.7), eNiro (1.8), id3 (1.8), Leaf (1.6), Mini Electric (1.4), Polestar 2 (2), and MG5 (1.5). Older popular models include the REnault Zoe (1.5). This is pretty much on a par with the UK’s best selling cars overall - the Puma is lighter at 1.4 tons, I’ll grant you, but the Qashqai is number 2 and it’s 1.6, and theres things like the Sportage at 1.9 too.
Your analysis that follows is also wrong: road wear increases at the fourth power of weight. This means that all SUVs, even the heaviest, cause negligible road wear. The vehicles that actually cause road wear are HGVs, buses, rubbish trucks, fire engines, etc. They cause more than 99% of the damage. Supposed extra road wear for EV passenger vehicles is a complete non-issue. If you’re really fussed about the size and weight of cars, you should be suggesting people drive a Citroen Ami (<0.5 ton) or use a cargo bike or active transport instead of driving in the first place. Hybrids are a bad joke that cause more issues than they solve, not least by people deluding themselves that they cut emissions. If you want to drive a small low impact car, there are plenty of EVs that fit the bill, including tons of i3s on the second hand market (1.3 tons)
"1. Trust in government is low in the automotive industry because the government moved what appeared to be a fixed timetable for EV transition . . ."
In regard to the EV rollout, I doubt that trust is government is low only due to a change in the timetable for EV transition. Comments from early adopters of EVs (Rowan Atkinson's comments, for instance) have contributed to a public skepticism about EVs as well as skepticism about what governments are telling the public about EVs.
"2. Cost neutral incentives are just that: incentives. They make it more enticing to consumers to switch by, for example, lowering upfront costs (running costs are already much lower) . . ."
Cost neutral incentives are not truly cost neutral as they do not compensate consumers for the cost of battery replacement. On an EV, battery replacement usually needs to occur before an EV has 200,000 miles on it. The cost of battery replacement can easily exceed 20,000 pounds. By comparison, many conventional gas powered vehicles are still on the road with over 200,000 miles on them. The cost of a conventional engine replacement (including labour) is usually less than 10,000 pounds.
"3. EVs are of course primarily a new car purchase. All new cars are outside the affordability of the “average” consumer. But prices are dropping and will continue to drop further — eg the Dacia Spring, on sale new for £15k . . ."
Again, see above regarding battery replacement costs. In my observation, drivers of EVs are tending toward heavier more expensive vehicles. The reason? Heavier more expensive EVs can carry a larger batter and have longer range. These heavier more expensive vehicles with their larger lithium batteries impose a cost on infrastructure in that heavier vehicles impose more wear on roads. Lithium mining is not conflict free or environmentally impact free. My point is not to dismiss EVs outright, but to suggest that many people could achieve an equivalently lower CO2 footprint by driving a small hybrid (Toyota Corolla hybrid, for example) rather than a large, heavy, expensive EV.
"4. There is no charging station issue. There is a *perceived* charging station issue, perceived by non-EV drivers. . . "
I would suspect that only a tiny fraction of households in the UK have their own solar panels or wind generators. Without that, power to charge EVs ultimately comes from the grid. As of 2022, in the UK, wind generated power accounts for 26.8% of generation, solar accounts for 4.4%, and hydroelectric accounts for 1.8%. So, in total, only 33% of power in the UK is generated from non-greenhouse gas emitting sources. The same CO2/methane reduction could be achieved from driving a high miles to the gallon hybrid. For instance, the Toyota Corolla is rated as achieving 65 miles to the gallon on the highway.
My issue with charging stations is not that there might not be enough of them or that it takes a long time to charge. My issue is that charging stations are usually powered from natural gas turbines or the grid, both of which have a large CO2/methane footprint.
"5. EVs are largely powered by low carbon electricity (70% over the course of a year) and the mix is lower carbon each and every year . . ."
Sight source. I doubt that this correct. The dominant source of CO2/methane free electricity in the UK is wind. There is likely a limit to how much wind generating capacity can be built. See, for instance, here:
To be clear, I am not against EVs. But I think the fervour of the all EV crowd needs to be confronted with reality and be brought back to the central matter at hand: we need to significantly reduce the CO2 and methane footprint without incurring other environmental costs and without destroying the economy.
Number 10 about the income threshold for family visas is so iniquitous. Having had recent experience of a family member’s wife passing all the thresholds, but missing out on the income one, I can see how devastating this is for them. Is this who we are?
Well. I am one of the few. Of course there are many more (and I won’t get started on Brexit), but I especially like Alastair Campbell’s repeated calls for the contractual enforcement of the Nolan principles in public life; and for a clear commitment to re-introduce decency & integrity to the nation from the top down. Zero cost.
It's genuinely jarring to me how little discussion is had about the amount of money processing asylum claims competently would save. Can understand Labour not putting a number on it until election season so as to achieve maximum effect, but it's one hell of an indictment against the political media's interest in actual policy and policy outcomes
1 Make it clear that divergence from the EU for its own sake is no longer policy.
2. Put Whitehall resources - probably largely into an enhanced mission in Brussels - into the detailed work of understanding where EU regulation has gone and where it is going, trying to influence it as much as possible from outside, and taking careful and evidence-based decisions about whether the general advantages of having similar regulations are outweighed by real benefits from not following them.
3. Where possible, use the huge powers that Conservative legislation has given Ministers to make the changes needed to turn those decisions into revised rules.
4. Improve regulatory resourcing. Many regulators simply do not have the resources they need, particularly in terms of skills and experience, to regulate efficiently or effectively. In many cases, such resources could be funded by allowing them to raise fees or, in some cases, by allowing them to retain a proportion of penalties imposed: and in many of those cases business would be happy to pay higher fees in return for swifter and smarter regulation.
Three policy proposals: a Citizen's Wealth Fund (not sure if their proposed 'national' one is a sovereign one or not), Dual Interest Rates, and a Digital Dividend (i.e., charging the FAANG companies for using our data). None of these require new taxes, but each one is easy to explain and relatively easy to implement. Each would also make a big difference over a long enough period, and could, at least in principle, appeal to both the left and right.
would love to see all your proposals considered, too
Very sensible thinking. I do think that Labour have to manage their comms carefully. As well as being clear what they stand for they need to state early on what the direction of travel will be ie this needs to be inspirational so that well communicated 'small wins' can be seen as just the start of where they will end up eventually. Getting the public on board without over promising will be essential.
These probably fail the primary legislation test but they should be free, very noticeable and likely a net benefit to the economy:
- British Summer Time all year round.
- 1/2/3/4 new Bank Holidays. A benefit but not in cash to workers so not inflationary and crucially they can’t be capitalised into higher rents to landlords or property prices. Probably boosts productivity per hour worked too. Corbyn’s manifestos included this. Jan 2nd, St George’s Day, then one each for October/November. Jubilees and other national celebrations seem to be able to add days easily.
- End Sunday trading laws. Online is 24/7, and all the mini Sainsburys/Tescos/Co-ops scooping up a lot of small business benefits anyway. Let shops over 280m2 open according to demand.
Good list, and it shows that one of the problems with the current government is not just that they’ve made bad policy decisions, they also just aren’t any good at governing.
One other free idea, on planning. As I understand it, changing planning guidance could quite rapidly unlock some new development (eg onshore wind and solar), which would unlock economic activity and jobs (and in the case of energy reduce prices and cut our gas import bill). This could be done while legislation to effect a more thorough reform of the planning system was progressed.
Cash flow in government. (This one might be for your Mum, This is niche)
My Mum is 91 and lives with dementia. She'll die within the next couple of years.
She will have some inheritance tax to pay when that happens.
Payment to government is due 6 months after her death. This obviously feeds money into the state at that point. However the current probate process still takes longer - there seems to be a crazy time lag after this point to handle distribution of monies to the family members detailed in a will, creating an unproductive lag beyond the payment date and is “keeping” money inactive much too long??
If Labour doesn’t touch IHT I feel it should review cash flow and the potential benefit of some economic marginal gains through improved speed of process across all areas of collection and distribution?
If IHT is currently less than 1% of income to the economy and this increases, the sums reentering the economy much more quickly should have a much larger beneficial societal and fiscal benefit than now?
The funny thing is that there's equally nothing stopping the Conservative Party doing these things right now - as you note it's cost neutral so there's no financial constraint. But we all know they won't.
Excellent set of suggestions. I feel it will be necessary if Labour are not going to act as a "refresh and reorganise" break for yet another long-term Tory administration or something even worse!
Excellent suggestions and also reflects political reality. I just hope Labour read the substack!
A welcome piece of positivity for Easter Sunday. Thanks, Sam.
One more for consideration.
Decouple the pricing of electricity from the international wholesale cost of gas so that electricity prices reflect the not insignificant input from renewables. This would make people better off without spending UKGov money and prove popular given the fact that most people recognise they are being ripped off. It would also begin to restore some trust in a government working for the people, not against them.
Unfortunately it's an economic reality that the market price of a commodity is set by the costs of the marginal provider (not the average provider). Which in electricity is gas.
You can only "decouple" the electricity price from gas with either a massive implicit or explicit Government subsidy or significant investment into new power plants/storage.
I like your selection criteria, Sam. I would suggest adding a few more to prioritise, all built on the premise that the Labour Party needs to learn lessons from the Biden administration’s problems in how to tackle a defeated hard-right party:
1. Give heart to your supporters. Each policy needs to please your support base, and improve their morale
2. Send a message to your opponents that you are unafraid to use your power. Timidity from Biden’s administration on key topics provided Republicans with a breathing space and a sense that they would go further in pursuit of long term power than Biden ever would. For example, Biden did not change the Supreme Court’s size, treating it as fixed, despite it having changed many times in the past and for a lot less reason. Ceding this ground was a disaster. Labour will have a big, possibly huge, majority. If they govern as though it’s slim, it will do them no favours
3. Expose the breadth and depth of the squalid and incompetent nature of Tory decision-making, so that the idea of having them back in power becomes more and more repugnant. This is coupled to #2 above, of course, but where that is about ensuring that opponents do not regroup, this is about ensuring the polity stays with you
4. As a whole, try to cover the full range of government, especially (a) public services and (b) governance
With that in mind, I’d suggest adding the following, some of which do cost some money:
1. Justice: Create a fresh compensation scheme for subpostmasters and have it pay out within three months, with absolutely minimal paperwork
2. Transport: institute a fresh EV transition timetable that includes 2030 but also covers commercial vehicles, and institute a bunch of cost-neutral incentive schemes to get there. Do it by fiat and then put it into legislation at leisure, so it becomes hard to unpick. Do it in a way that gets the motor industry saying how happy they are to have stability restored
3. Transport & local government: change the rules to allow councils autonomy over LTNs and similar decisions. Do it in a way that gets them singing your praises
4. Energy: run a new CfD as quickly as possible, but rebuilt to be sane and actually drive large scale off and on shore wind and storage. This used to work and was deliberately broken — it can be fixed. Get some headlines about how wind is growing once again — wind is very popular including when built in local areas. Coupled to this…
5. Energy: change planning requirements so that councils can permit large scale solar / wind / battery easily with a payback to local communities, without the ability for one person to block
6. Housing: set up a Street Votes scheme, a la Sam Bowman. What Gove supposedly wanted to do but hasn’t actually done
7. Media: announce new terms for the BBC’s Charter Review that ensure its future as a public service broadcaster
8. Media: do what it takes with Ofcom to ensure GBNews abides by the rules it currently ignores.
9. Health: put the procurement scandal papers relating to PPE into the public domain. Invite open source analysis. Unearth the links. Set up the public inquiry into this. Implement new rules including “no contract shall be won by a company owned by an unabashed racist”
I’m sure there’s a ton more. With a lot of these issues, the challenge will be to act at speed, during the honeymoon, before the Tories can regroup in any way, and despite the lack of capacity of the civil service. That requires a focus on the end goal, driving through the detail and not allowing it to bog things down, and pushing straight past vested interests. All of that is tough, but a big majority is truly game changing and lots of currently noisy voices will be irrelevant as soon as the election is won (and may stay that way if Labour acts fast enough)
One other suggestion has just come to me:
10. Governance: ban all individual donations of more than £1m to a party. Ban anyone donating £100k+ from getting a gong for three years. These will be low impact for Labour, but cause further headaches for the Tories, as well as being populist and frankly also the right thing to do.
Maybe we even need to be looking at term limits for all MPs and public funding of politics.
Lets have a quiet revolution to prevent a loud one
‘Low impact for Labour’???
Will wipe out the majority of Labour’s union funding….which is the majority of its funding!
Reintroduce district auditors
Stop all right to buy - legislation to follow. Meanwhile all sales added to a national pot not restricted to local area.
integrate all local transport services rail bus and cycle hire.
Great list by the way.
And that would be a bad thing.......Why
1. To prevent Tory, cleaving to big business lobbying
2. To drag Labour from Ideology to pragmatism
What i hear all the time, is Labour will revert to the far left. Stop that and stick a stake in the ground for pragmatism
In practice what that would mean is that the political parties would then be state funded. So the current political settlement (2 big parties and a number of much smaller ones) would be set in stone and parties would seek to manipulate the funding mechanism (see the SNP rush to have audited accounts in order to get ‘short’ money).
Parties should live or die based on votes and people’s desire to fund them
Or all parties received the same and were subject to the same limits thus creating no value in spending more. Like a snap election, no campaigning, the electorate receives thru the door one booklet with every manifesto andvthen decision is made on that and past performance
They recieve 'short' funds dependant on number of MPs (or MSPs).
I think we should start with enforcing spending limits that already exist.
For example the Greens near where I live frankly massively break the law on campaign spending to support Caroline Lucas (quite what they are scared of given the LibDems and Labour basically stand aside, although Labour are not this time as it's a target seat).
They flood the constituency with activists, posters and so on but claim they spend less than 15K! But of course they are held to a different moral standard......
All governments that have been in office too long become corrupted - populated by chancers and spivs on the make. The previous Labour government was riddled with it as is the current Tory one.
The previous Labour government quite openly traded honours for cash and ‘soft’ loans which led to the resignation of Blair some 8 months or so later post Police investigation/whitewash. What’s the difference?
If it’s partisan it has *no* chance of success….
I disagree with your interpretation of what happened at the end of the previous Labour government. In particular, I think the levels of corruption have seen since Johnson became PM have been vastly worse than anything under New Labour. I abhor the notion of “a plague on your all houses” / “they’re all as bad as each other”. It elides critically important differences. And anyway — my suggested policy would *prevent* any trading of honours for cash by a Labour government just as it would for a future Tory government, so it is the very opposite of partisan in that respect!
Sorry I’m an equal opportunity hater. The last Labour government was utterly corrupt and Lord Levy quite openly sold honours for cash. Mandelson quite openly helped his billionaire chums and is extremely wealthy - sources unclear.
It is utterly partisan to describe them as anything other.
They are all the same. Happens to all governments that have been in office too long.
PS term limits for PMs may be more effective
And MPs
I meant individuals. There is a clear problem of corruption that is entirely to do with individuals. I would frame it in that way. There will be complaints and possibly a JR, but I think it could be constructed in such a way as to work. It requires boldness rather than timidity:
- Relishing the inevitable attacks because the counter-attacks are so juicy, politically: “look at the corrupt Tories, defending the right of ex-KGB spies to buy seats in the Lords, and bunging knighthoods to their mates in return for cash” etc
- Being willing to give up the (relatively few) large donations from individuals that may come to Labour in the future in return for making politics much much harder for the Tories
And yes, partisan. But the argument is simply: the corruption of today is itself partisan, as well as being corrupt
I should have been clearer — I meant “donations by individuals worth more than £1m”, not simply “donations worth more than £1m”. Sorry about that!
No problem. Do you mean individuals or corporations?
If you attack the majority of Tory political funding but leave Labour’s union funding intact that is a partisan attack and would lose the consequent judicial review. In addition the previous Labour government took a lot of money from individual donations ……
"2. Transport: institute a fresh EV transition timetable that includes 2030 but also covers commercial vehicles, and institute a bunch of cost-neutral incentive schemes to get there. Do it by fiat and then put it into legislation at leisure, so it becomes hard to unpick. Do it in a way that gets the motor industry saying how happy they are to have stability restored"
Given that trust in government is low, how would this suggested policy of doubling down on electric vehicles increase trust in government?
EVs are mostly outside the price range of what the average consumer can afford. What about the charging station issue? What is the point of pushing forward on EVs if the charging stations are not powered by renewable, non-greenhouse sources of energy?
Japanese and American car makers are backing off EVs. Japan, for sometime, has put their efforts into hybrids, not EVs.
Contrary to being popular, pushing forward "by fiat" on EVs would certainly repel voters away from the Labour Party.
1. Trust in government is low in the automotive industry because the government moved what appeared to be a fixed timetable for EV transition. Thus, reverting to the prior timetable, clarifying it, and locking it in place provides the automotive industry with the policy certainty they have been demanding. It also ensures that stronger consumer incentives exist to switch, which better lines up with the mandatory sales mix that automakers must achieve (22% this year).
2. Cost neutral incentives are just that: incentives. They make it more enticing to consumers to switch by, for example, lowering upfront costs (running costs are already much lower).
3. EVs are of course primarily a new car purchase. All new cars are outside the affordability of the “average” consumer. But prices are dropping and will continue to drop further — eg the Dacia Spring, on sale new for £15k. And many EVs will become cheaper this year for a whole bunch of reasons relating to price pressures.
4. There is no charging station issue. There is a *perceived* charging station issue, perceived by non-EV drivers. It starts with a misunderstanding of demand for public charging, with an assumption that EVs use public chargers at the same rate that ICE cars use petrol stations. In fact, a large majority of EVs are almost never charged at a public station, and this will always be the case, because 70%+ of UK cars are parked off-street and can thus be charged domestically (and large numbers of others can be charged in work car parks, and even more using lamp-post charging on residential streets, etc). There’s also a misunderstanding that EVs need to be charged each night. In fact, they need to be charged about once a fortnight on average (given typical 250 mile range and average UK daily distance driven of 20 miles)
5. EVs are largely powered by low carbon electricity (70% over the course of a year) and the mix is lower carbon each and every year. But even if they were powered on gas and coal, they’d still use the fuel more efficiently than ICE, they’d still remove tailpipe emissions from areas where people live, and they’d still cut noise (and the morbidity and mortality associated with noise). The fact that on top of all that, they also cut carbon is really a demonstration of just why they’re so compelling from an ecological perspective compared to ICE vehicles
7. While Japanese and (some) US OEMs are backing away, Chinese and Korean and European manufacturers are all doubling down.
8. You may not like EVs, but EVs are overall extremely popular including with non-EV drivers, and becoming ever more so
Continued…
"4.I would suspect that only a tiny fraction of households in the UK have their own solar panels or wind generators. Without that, power to charge EVs ultimately comes from the grid. As of 2022, in the UK, wind generated power accounts for 26.8% of generation, solar accounts for 4.4%, and hydroelectric accounts for 1.8%. So, in total, only 33% of power in the UK is generated from non-greenhouse gas emitting sources. The same CO2/methane reduction could be achieved from driving a high miles to the gallon hybrid. For instance, the Toyota Corolla is rated as achieving 65 miles to the gallon on the highway.”
Why use 2022 figures? Rolling 12 month figures are readily available eg on Iamkate.com. And your figures are wrong even on their own account anyway, as you assumed that there only two categories are renewables and fossil fuels, when the third category is nuclear, which is also zero carbon. For the last 12 month rolling period, only 1.1% of the UK’s electricity mix was coal, and another 32.2% was gas. The rest was all low or zero carbon: 10% via interconnectors from eg France and Norway, 31% wind, 5% solar, 1% hydro, 14% nuclear, and 6% biomass (plus a tiny bit of pumped storage). So the grid mix is greener than you said, it’s greener than it was in 2022, and it will get greener and greener in future years. But anyway — even if the grid mix were 100% gas, it would still be greener than burning your petrol in your car, because that’s an inefficient process compared to burning gas in an industrial turbine and electric motors are about 4x as efficient in miles per unit of energy in moving the car. Plus it means removing all that pollution from population centres. You cannot get anywhere close to the same mpge equivalent in a Toyota Corolla hybrid. For example, the Model 3 gets 131 mpge, ie it’s twice as efficient as your Toyota Corolla hybrid. And that’s in the US, where the grid mix is dirtier. The well-to-wheel carbon intensity studies have demonstrated this conclusively.
“My issue with charging stations is not that there might not be enough of them or that it takes a long time to charge. My issue is that charging stations are usually powered from natural gas turbines or the grid, both of which have a large CO2/methane footprint.”
You’re just plain wrong on this again. Using the grid as a source of energy to move a vehicle is dramatically lower in carbon footprint than burning petrol, even when it’s a Toyota Corolla hybrid.
"5. EVs are largely powered by low carbon electricity (70% over the course of a year) and the mix is lower carbon each and every year . . ."
Sight source. I doubt that this correct. The dominant source of CO2/methane free electricity in the UK is wind. There is likely a limit to how much wind generating capacity can be built. See, for instance, here:
https://www.bbc.com/news/explainers-60945298”
It’s “cite” not “sight. And there are literally dozens of sites out there on the internet that show you the annual grid mix for the UK The National Grid provides free data, and they all cut it up slightly differently. I mentioned Iamkate above, but here’s another source for you:
https://www.energydashboard.co.uk/historical
You will see there that the UK a smidgeon under 70% of its electricity from low carbon sources in the last 12 months, just as I said. You can doubt all you like, but the data is there if you are willing to look at it.
i don’t know what you saw in that article that made you think there was some kind of “limit to how much wind generating capacity can be built”. The UK has nearly 100GW of wind generating capacity in the pipeline — twice the amount that the government said it was targeting in the 2022 energy strategy.
https://www.edie.net/uks-offshore-wind-pipeline-nears-record-100gw/
The wind is there for us to use if we have the political will. NB, this pipeline is dominated by offshore, too, so it’s not really down to NIMBYism. It’s down to an idiot government who stuffed up the CfD regime because they lack the will (or more accurately, are actively willing the slowdown of renewables buildout in favour of fossil projects, because that appeases their founders and makes the remaining old gimmers who still support them happy).
“To be clear, I am not against EVs. But I think the fervour of the all EV crowd needs to be confronted with reality and be brought back to the central matter at hand: we need to significantly reduce the CO2 and methane footprint without incurring other environmental costs and without destroying the economy.”
You’re not going to convince anyone when you don’t know the basic facts:
- You thought batteries have to be replaced at 200k miles, when they don’t
- You thought only 33% of UK electricity comes from low carbon sources when it’s actually 70% (and rising)
- You thought most EVs sold in the UK were big and heavy, when they’re not especially bigger or heavier than the best selling ICE vehicles
- You thought driving a Toyota Corolla hybrid that got 65mpg was lower carbon than driving an EV, when a Model 3 in the US gets twice the mpge and even higher in the UK with our greener grid mix
Etc
If you’re really really fussed about reducing carbon intensity, then the answer is always to support policies that encourage as much modal shift to active and public transport as possible, plus EVs to decarbonise the remaining journeys.
Biomass is not free of emitting greenhouse gases.
Nuclear energy is highly problematic in that the long term waste disposal issue has not been solved. Even if you include nuclear energy in the mix of so called zero emission sources of energy, the total of wind, solar, nuclear and hydroelectric is less than 50%. (Natural gas powered turbines are not emission free.)
In any case, I suspect that you will breathlessly respond yet again, without really thinking about the actual problem at hand.
*Nothing* is 100% free of emitting greenhouse gases. But biomass is a low carbon power source. You’re no doubt thinking that it’s not because CO2 is emitted when it’s burned. But that is to misunderstand what makes fossil fuels problematic: they contain sequestered carbon accumulated over billions of years. And anyway, biomass is obviously only a small percentage of the UK grid mix — it’s just one of many low carbon sources that you didn’t manage to include in your estimate. And you keep getting your maths wrong. The only high carbon sources of power that the UK used in the last twelve months were coal (1.1%) and gas (32.2%). 1.1 + 32.2 = 33.3% fossil fuel. 100 = 33.3 = 66.6% non high carbon power. That was 6% biomass + 14% nuclear + 5% solar + 31% wind. And you have conveniently assumed that all the power from the interconnectors was high carbon. But that power came from Norway (mainly hydro), France (mainly nuclear), Denmark (mainly wind) and Belgium (mainly a mix of wind, solar and nuclear). So it was largely low carbon — probably 80% or more.
Obviously I’m going to respond again, because you are getting it wrong again. The problem *I* opened this discussion with was how to incentivise the decarbonisation of the UK’s car fleet by using cost neutral incentives for EVs in a consistent policy framework. You’ve said this is a bad idea and attempted to set out why, and each time I point out that you’ve got your facts wrong, you raise a new sub-topic and get new facts wrong. And not once have you said “oh, actually I didn’t know that the data was available on the UK grid mix” because you’re too busy focused on defending an indefensibly wrong position such as “70% of the UK’s electricity is high carbon” and this leads you into absurdities such as ignoring nuclear and biomass or saying EV batteries need replacement after 200k miles, based on nothing more than some half remembered stuff you read somewhere from Rowan Atkinson or some other person with a shaky grasp of the facts. It’s fun watching you contort yourself, but it’s not very dignified. You could always stop, or admit that this is a topic on which you’re not as well versed as you think you are. Better yet, you could spend your time reading some of Auke Hoekstra’s prolific writings debunking myths about EVs with an open mind, and see what you learn from that.
March 2024 BBC article:
https://www.bbc.com/news/58160547
Some quotes:
"Buildings account for about 17% of the UK's greenhouse gas emissions, mainly due to burning fossil fuels for heating."
"The UK has some of the least energy-efficient homes in Europe. Insulation is one of the most effective ways to reduce emissions from housing, by reducing the energy needed for heating."
"in September 2023, the government cancelled regulations that would have required landlords to improve the energy efficiency of private rented homes."
"there has been "little progress" switching to lower carbon modes of travel, such as public transport. "
"Flying makes up about 7% of overall UK emissions"
"The UK has a strategy for delivering net zero aviation by 2050."
"It has been criticised for relying too much on technologies such as sustainable fuels and zero emissions aircraft that do not yet exist."
"As a result, the CCC says that the government should be looking at how to manage demand rather than allowing it to grow - for example addressing private jet use and providing lower cost rail travel."
Addressing private jet use . . . good idea.
"14% nuclear + 5% solar + 31% wind"
Source? According to this Business News Wales article, about 28% of electricity in the UK is generated by wind:
https://businessnewswales.com/wind-generates-record-annual-percentage-of-uk-electricity-while-fossil-fuels-drop-to-record-low/
And . . .
"Overall, renewables outperformed fossil fuels for a third year by generating 47.3% of the UK’s electricity, another new annual record (up from 41.5% in 2022), compared to 36.3% from oil, gas and coal – a record annual low from fossil fuels (which produced 40.8% in 2022) – most of which came from gas (34.3% in 2023)."
So, as I said in a previous comment, less than 50% of UK's electricity is derived from renewables, even this past year.
What percentage of cars in the UK are EVs? Probably less than 5%. Wind, nuclear and solar will not be able to be scaled up to meet the car driving capacity of the UK if everyone is driving an EV.
Furthermore, wind is variable throughout the day. To balance the varying load on the grid, electricity generators have to use combined cycle natural gas turbines, which can quickly be tuned to match the rise and fall of wind generation. So unless storage can be dramatically increased, the wind to combined cycle natural gas turbine proportions of electricity generation will probably not change that much. For instance, it is unlikely that the UK could generate 60% of its power from wind and 20% from combined cycle natural gas turbines.
Note: I haven't insulted your "maths" ability (newsflash: this is arithmetic) or your basic intelligence. I also haven't bafflegabbed you with a lot of extraneous detail.
As I said in a previous comment, the mix of true low greenhouse gas sources of energy will probably reach a limit. Hybrids have their place along with EVs. The auto industries in Japan and the US seem to be cluing into this. Perhaps the UK will not. But then again, it's not as if the UK is a leading manufacturer of cutting edge automobile technology. It doesn't really matter in the broader sense if the UK strangles its economy with too aggressive EV adoption policies that, in the end, will not achieve "net zero".
“In regard to the EV rollout, I doubt that trust is government is low only due to a change in the timetable for EV transition. Comments from early adopters of EVs (Rowan Atkinson's comments, for instance) have contributed to a public skepticism about EVs as well as skepticism about what governments are telling the public about EVs.”
I said the *automotive industry’s trust in government* was low. You have talked about negative press affecting consumer confidence. That is a different issue.
"Cost neutral incentives are not truly cost neutral as they do not compensate consumers for the cost of battery replacement. On an EV, battery replacement usually needs to occur before an EV has 200,000 miles on it. The cost of battery replacement can easily exceed 20,000 pounds. By comparison, many conventional gas powered vehicles are still on the road with over 200,000 miles on them. The cost of a conventional engine replacement (including labour) is usually less than 10,000 pounds.”
A cost neutral incentive does not mean what you think it means. It means that there is no overall impact to HMG finances (ie net neutral for tax and spending). It has nothing to do with the impact on individuals. Obviously for individuals, an incentive needs to be an incentive, so it needs to cut a cost. But it doesn’t need to cut all costs to zero: that’s not what cost neutral incentives means. You just haven’t understood the economic term. You also have your facts wildly, utterly, and completely wrong about EV battery life. EV batteries don’t fail after 200k miles. After somewhere between 500 and 1500 charge-discharge cycles, range will be at about 80% of the original. But this is what those calculations look like for, say, a new MG4 SE LR:
- Range is 280 miles new
- After 1000 full charge-discharge cycles, range will then be around 80%
- 80% of 280 miles is 224 miles. That is still a more than good enough range for many people and absolutely doesn’t imply the battery needs to be replaced
- When will the car be at 1000 cycles? 260 is the rough halfway point between 280 and 220. 1000*260 = 260,000 miles. Well north of 200k, and no-one expects a car with 260k miles on the clock to be exactly as good as new. After all, given the average UK car drives 18 miles a day, that car would be *40 years old*. So you can see that worrying about a battery replacement is completely silly. It’s an issue for decades from now, by which time prices will have dropped massively, range will have increased greatly, and the car will probably be ready for scrap anyway (except the battery materials can be salvaged and reused in static applications, which you can’t do with a 40 year old engine)
“In my observation, drivers of EVs are tending toward heavier more expensive vehicles. The reason? Heavier more expensive EVs can carry a larger batter and have longer range. These heavier more expensive vehicles with their larger lithium batteries impose a cost on infrastructure in that heavier vehicles impose more wear on roads. Lithium mining is not conflict free or environmentally impact free. My point is not to dismiss EVs outright, but to suggest that many people could achieve an equivalently lower CO2 footprint by driving a small hybrid (Toyota Corolla hybrid, for example) rather than a large, heavy, expensive EV.”
Your observation is flat out wrong. The best selling EVs in the UK are the Model Y (<2 tons despite being an SUV), Model 3 (1.7), eNiro (1.8), id3 (1.8), Leaf (1.6), Mini Electric (1.4), Polestar 2 (2), and MG5 (1.5). Older popular models include the REnault Zoe (1.5). This is pretty much on a par with the UK’s best selling cars overall - the Puma is lighter at 1.4 tons, I’ll grant you, but the Qashqai is number 2 and it’s 1.6, and theres things like the Sportage at 1.9 too.
Your analysis that follows is also wrong: road wear increases at the fourth power of weight. This means that all SUVs, even the heaviest, cause negligible road wear. The vehicles that actually cause road wear are HGVs, buses, rubbish trucks, fire engines, etc. They cause more than 99% of the damage. Supposed extra road wear for EV passenger vehicles is a complete non-issue. If you’re really fussed about the size and weight of cars, you should be suggesting people drive a Citroen Ami (<0.5 ton) or use a cargo bike or active transport instead of driving in the first place. Hybrids are a bad joke that cause more issues than they solve, not least by people deluding themselves that they cut emissions. If you want to drive a small low impact car, there are plenty of EVs that fit the bill, including tons of i3s on the second hand market (1.3 tons)
Continues…
"1. Trust in government is low in the automotive industry because the government moved what appeared to be a fixed timetable for EV transition . . ."
In regard to the EV rollout, I doubt that trust is government is low only due to a change in the timetable for EV transition. Comments from early adopters of EVs (Rowan Atkinson's comments, for instance) have contributed to a public skepticism about EVs as well as skepticism about what governments are telling the public about EVs.
"2. Cost neutral incentives are just that: incentives. They make it more enticing to consumers to switch by, for example, lowering upfront costs (running costs are already much lower) . . ."
Cost neutral incentives are not truly cost neutral as they do not compensate consumers for the cost of battery replacement. On an EV, battery replacement usually needs to occur before an EV has 200,000 miles on it. The cost of battery replacement can easily exceed 20,000 pounds. By comparison, many conventional gas powered vehicles are still on the road with over 200,000 miles on them. The cost of a conventional engine replacement (including labour) is usually less than 10,000 pounds.
"3. EVs are of course primarily a new car purchase. All new cars are outside the affordability of the “average” consumer. But prices are dropping and will continue to drop further — eg the Dacia Spring, on sale new for £15k . . ."
Again, see above regarding battery replacement costs. In my observation, drivers of EVs are tending toward heavier more expensive vehicles. The reason? Heavier more expensive EVs can carry a larger batter and have longer range. These heavier more expensive vehicles with their larger lithium batteries impose a cost on infrastructure in that heavier vehicles impose more wear on roads. Lithium mining is not conflict free or environmentally impact free. My point is not to dismiss EVs outright, but to suggest that many people could achieve an equivalently lower CO2 footprint by driving a small hybrid (Toyota Corolla hybrid, for example) rather than a large, heavy, expensive EV.
"4. There is no charging station issue. There is a *perceived* charging station issue, perceived by non-EV drivers. . . "
I would suspect that only a tiny fraction of households in the UK have their own solar panels or wind generators. Without that, power to charge EVs ultimately comes from the grid. As of 2022, in the UK, wind generated power accounts for 26.8% of generation, solar accounts for 4.4%, and hydroelectric accounts for 1.8%. So, in total, only 33% of power in the UK is generated from non-greenhouse gas emitting sources. The same CO2/methane reduction could be achieved from driving a high miles to the gallon hybrid. For instance, the Toyota Corolla is rated as achieving 65 miles to the gallon on the highway.
My issue with charging stations is not that there might not be enough of them or that it takes a long time to charge. My issue is that charging stations are usually powered from natural gas turbines or the grid, both of which have a large CO2/methane footprint.
"5. EVs are largely powered by low carbon electricity (70% over the course of a year) and the mix is lower carbon each and every year . . ."
Sight source. I doubt that this correct. The dominant source of CO2/methane free electricity in the UK is wind. There is likely a limit to how much wind generating capacity can be built. See, for instance, here:
https://www.bbc.com/news/explainers-60945298
To be clear, I am not against EVs. But I think the fervour of the all EV crowd needs to be confronted with reality and be brought back to the central matter at hand: we need to significantly reduce the CO2 and methane footprint without incurring other environmental costs and without destroying the economy.
Number 10 about the income threshold for family visas is so iniquitous. Having had recent experience of a family member’s wife passing all the thresholds, but missing out on the income one, I can see how devastating this is for them. Is this who we are?
Well. I am one of the few. Of course there are many more (and I won’t get started on Brexit), but I especially like Alastair Campbell’s repeated calls for the contractual enforcement of the Nolan principles in public life; and for a clear commitment to re-introduce decency & integrity to the nation from the top down. Zero cost.
It's genuinely jarring to me how little discussion is had about the amount of money processing asylum claims competently would save. Can understand Labour not putting a number on it until election season so as to achieve maximum effect, but it's one hell of an indictment against the political media's interest in actual policy and policy outcomes
My list, given the need to tackle regulatory chaos: part of the “stability” that Rachel Reeves rightly says is a foundation for economic growth. Background in my post: https://open.substack.com/pub/georgeperetzkc/p/regulatory-stability-a-labour-priority?r=ga1yo&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
1 Make it clear that divergence from the EU for its own sake is no longer policy.
2. Put Whitehall resources - probably largely into an enhanced mission in Brussels - into the detailed work of understanding where EU regulation has gone and where it is going, trying to influence it as much as possible from outside, and taking careful and evidence-based decisions about whether the general advantages of having similar regulations are outweighed by real benefits from not following them.
3. Where possible, use the huge powers that Conservative legislation has given Ministers to make the changes needed to turn those decisions into revised rules.
4. Improve regulatory resourcing. Many regulators simply do not have the resources they need, particularly in terms of skills and experience, to regulate efficiently or effectively. In many cases, such resources could be funded by allowing them to raise fees or, in some cases, by allowing them to retain a proportion of penalties imposed: and in many of those cases business would be happy to pay higher fees in return for swifter and smarter regulation.
Make energy efficiency investments for rental properties a tax efficient proposition.
Allow owners of fewer than 5 properties to claim 105% of the value of investments for corporation tax purposes/personal tax purposes.
Larger landowners could reclaim 102.5%.
There is no incentive for the rentier class to improve the quality of housing stock. The antithesis of “we’re all in it together”.
You could lower/eliminate VAT rates on conversions/refurbishments at the same time - while newbuilds are zero rated.
Three policy proposals: a Citizen's Wealth Fund (not sure if their proposed 'national' one is a sovereign one or not), Dual Interest Rates, and a Digital Dividend (i.e., charging the FAANG companies for using our data). None of these require new taxes, but each one is easy to explain and relatively easy to implement. Each would also make a big difference over a long enough period, and could, at least in principle, appeal to both the left and right.
would love to see all your proposals considered, too
Very sensible thinking. I do think that Labour have to manage their comms carefully. As well as being clear what they stand for they need to state early on what the direction of travel will be ie this needs to be inspirational so that well communicated 'small wins' can be seen as just the start of where they will end up eventually. Getting the public on board without over promising will be essential.
These probably fail the primary legislation test but they should be free, very noticeable and likely a net benefit to the economy:
- British Summer Time all year round.
- 1/2/3/4 new Bank Holidays. A benefit but not in cash to workers so not inflationary and crucially they can’t be capitalised into higher rents to landlords or property prices. Probably boosts productivity per hour worked too. Corbyn’s manifestos included this. Jan 2nd, St George’s Day, then one each for October/November. Jubilees and other national celebrations seem to be able to add days easily.
- End Sunday trading laws. Online is 24/7, and all the mini Sainsburys/Tescos/Co-ops scooping up a lot of small business benefits anyway. Let shops over 280m2 open according to demand.
Good list, and it shows that one of the problems with the current government is not just that they’ve made bad policy decisions, they also just aren’t any good at governing.
One other free idea, on planning. As I understand it, changing planning guidance could quite rapidly unlock some new development (eg onshore wind and solar), which would unlock economic activity and jobs (and in the case of energy reduce prices and cut our gas import bill). This could be done while legislation to effect a more thorough reform of the planning system was progressed.
Hi Sam,
Cash flow in government. (This one might be for your Mum, This is niche)
My Mum is 91 and lives with dementia. She'll die within the next couple of years.
She will have some inheritance tax to pay when that happens.
Payment to government is due 6 months after her death. This obviously feeds money into the state at that point. However the current probate process still takes longer - there seems to be a crazy time lag after this point to handle distribution of monies to the family members detailed in a will, creating an unproductive lag beyond the payment date and is “keeping” money inactive much too long??
If Labour doesn’t touch IHT I feel it should review cash flow and the potential benefit of some economic marginal gains through improved speed of process across all areas of collection and distribution?
If IHT is currently less than 1% of income to the economy and this increases, the sums reentering the economy much more quickly should have a much larger beneficial societal and fiscal benefit than now?
Another brilliant piece! I echo Mark's comment above
The funny thing is that there's equally nothing stopping the Conservative Party doing these things right now - as you note it's cost neutral so there's no financial constraint. But we all know they won't.
Excellent set of suggestions. I feel it will be necessary if Labour are not going to act as a "refresh and reorganise" break for yet another long-term Tory administration or something even worse!