It was fascinating to see at the Fabians meeting on Labour’s transport policy at which I spoke on Monday night that so many of the contributions were on the themes of this campaign.People have begun to understand that the age of the dominance of the motor car is over.
Policy on transport now has to be framed in a completely different way. My short speech focused on making the policy ‘sustainable, fair and popular’. That is at the root of my opposition to HS2 - I don’t think it fits any of those criteria.
Maria Eagle, who unfortunately had to go because of Divisions in the Commons, emphasised the fairness aspect. She implied,but did not commit herself, to Labour only increasing fares by RPI or lower. She spoke out in favour, too, of a devolved agenda.
Contributions from the floor were almost entirely about the sustainable aspects of transport policy - cycling, walking, making better use of existing resources and so on. There seemed to be a universal recognition that stopping the growth in car use was essential. One speaker mentioned that his road had been blocked off by an ‘emergency only’ gate and suddenly kids were playing in the street and neighbours were chatting. All this has been well known in the academic literature for 50 years,but it is now at last being put into practice by enlightened authorities.
The left needs to recapture or create a political concensus to improve society in a way that Thatcher did for the right. This is going to be the issue that makes a mark for the left over the coming decades rather than the current right-light that the current labour party seems to be following. The left is not driving philosphical debate on what society is about and what politicians are there to do and it is encouraging that you are raising these questions.
Politicians are surely there to improve society and at least Thatcher thought she was doing this, even if we did not all agree with what she did. Sustainable, fair and popular should be extended beyond transport. Energy, Education, the NHS, Foreign policy all need a similar approach, although I guess this is beyond the Mayorship for the time being, although you could push over time given the right platform.
For the time being NHS hospital “consolidation” needs to have the transport impact taken into account, the ability to choose whatever school one likes needs to take transport into account and local authorities need to give a higher valuation to transport implications of developments. Not just transport impacts too, closures affect town centres and high streets and open public spaces and make them less viable and continues the vicious circle.
PS - I respectfully dissagree on HS2 - it is only not fair because we know they are going to put a price premium on the fares as with the rest of the rail network (especially in the south east) and i am not sure that the huge budget would be used for a whole load of other schemes instead. As an economic migrant to London from Yorkshire, I would receive benefit of being able to see my family more often because of the reduced journey times, but the full benefit of this is not captured in traditional business case analysis.