ANDREW PIERCE: Even Lib Dem leader Ed Davey is attacking Sadiq Khan’s hated Ulez expansion
The net zero-obsessed Lib Dems have inevitably been cheerleaders for London mayor Sadiq Khan’s hated expansion of the Ultra Low Emission Zone (Ulez).
The party backed the punitive scheme in their London mayoral manifesto in 2021 and, as recently as March 2022, Caroline Pidgeon, who ran as the Lib Dem mayoral candidate in 2016, welcomed the announcement the expansion was going ahead. ‘The extension of Ulez is right and necessary,’ she declared.
Tell that to the sanctimonious Lib Dem leader and outer London MP Sir Ed Davey. Given his party’s track record, you’d assume he would be the first to welcome the £12.50 daily charge on older cars driving through the zone. But not, it seems, when it comes to his Kingston and Surbiton constituency: he wants Ulez to exclude areas where the charge would be ‘very damaging’ to businesses.
In a letter to Khan, Davey says that local businesses have ‘staff and customers visiting them from the many sides of Surrey that border them and fear the impact will be greater here than anywhere else in London’.
He claims, too, that GPs, carers and patients have concerns about the impact on local care services. Funnily enough, it’s the same point made by Tories implacably opposed to the shameless stealth tax.
In a letter to Khan, Ed Davey says that local businesses have ‘staff and customers visiting them from the many sides of Surrey that border them and fear the impact will be greater here than anywhere else in London’
The net zero-obsessed Lib Dems have inevitably been cheerleaders for London mayor Sadiq Khan’s hated expansion of the Ultra Low Emission Zone (Ulez)
Some tips for the British delegation at the G20 summit in Delhi from Kim Darroch, our Ambassador to the U.S. from 2016 to 2019. ‘Poised to leave for my first foreign summit, I asked a Foreign Office sage for advice. He barked: ‘If you see food, eat it. If you see a bathroom, use it. If you see a convoy leaving, join it. It may be your only chance.’
Airline boss’s Rhapsody of regret
Waiting in Heathrow airport in 1974, the Queen singer Freddie Mercury idly drafted the lyrics of a new song on some paper that was to hand. He gave the song the title Mongolian Rhapsody, then struck that out in favour of Bohemian Rhapsody. Last week those lyrics – written on stationery from the now defunct airline British Midland – sold for more than £1.3 million at Sotheby’s. A wistful Lord Glendonbrook, who owned the airline, tells me: ‘If only a staff member had picked up the papers! £1 million would have been very useful in the early days of British Midland.’
In A Very Singular Man, his compelling documentary about Ted Heath on BBC4 at 10pm tonight, Michael Cockerell discusses with the late PM the many abortive attempts to improve his stilted image. ‘The first advice I got was that I ought to buy a racehorse, because Churchill had had great success with a racehorse,’ said Heath. ‘I hadn’t got the money. But my advisers said I could buy part of a racehorse. Part of a racehorse! And if it wasn’t successful, the situation would be far worse than it was without one. Did you ever hear such nonsense?’
Waiting in Heathrow airport in 1974, the Queen singer Freddie Mercury (pictured in September 1984) idly drafted the lyrics of a new song on some paper that was to hand. He gave the song the title Mongolian Rhapsody, then struck that out in favour of Bohemian Rhapsody
Sword-bearer penny tells MPs to sharpen up
Parliamentary headmistress Penny Mordaunt has warned ministers to get off their rear ends, as Education Secretary Gillian Keegan might put it, and reply promptly to letters from MPs. ‘Parliament has a right to hold Ministers to account and, as Leader of the House, I expect Government Ministers to respond quickly and effectively to MPs’ correspondence,’ she said. ‘I will continue to drive that message and I encourage MPs who get an unsatisfactory response to write to me – and I will take this up.’
Anyone who saw Mordaunt wielding two ceremonial swords at King Charles’s Coronation knows she is not a woman to be trifled with.
I-spy… in Portcullis House, the new Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Darren Jones, locked in conversation with Liam Byrne, who was Labour’s last holder of the post when in government. The same Byrne who left a note for his successor in 2010 that said: ‘I’m afraid there is no money.’ Just the chap to take advice from…
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