I can’t be the only motorist who’s fed up with being bullied

There are roughly 32.7 million people with a driving licence in the UK, according to the Department for Transport, and 38.6 million registered vehicles. Which means an awful lot of people are happily tootling along in cars, lorries, vans and motorbikes, going about their daily work and leisure trips, minding their own business, thinking that now’s the time they probably ought to get their lofts insulated, or find an alternative to a wood-burning stove, or install solar panels.

Motorists think about saving the planet most days, – in part because more than any other section of society, we’ve been consistently blamed and penalised for climate change, despite the existence of wood-burning stoves, gas boilers and cows. So why on earth has Insulate Britain targeted motorists with its ire this week by blocking junctions of the M25? And why, after witnessing the fury and misery of the thousands of drivers caught up in the chaos, is the Government still just shrugging its shoulders?

The truth, actually, is that no motorist will be planning roof insulation right now, we’re all busy saving the pennies, and the planet, by switching to electric vehicles, which are expensive. Most drivers think going electric is good – who doesn’t want to reduce their carbon footprint? But the Government is offloading the financial burden on to motorists at a rapid rate. In the past decade, it has reduced the plug-in grant for electrified cars by 50 per cent, from £5,000 to £2,500 now, and it will soon disappear completely. It has simultaneously ramped up penalties against diesel drivers – a fuel it encouraged us to buy until a few years ago. For the 2021-22 tax year, electric drivers will have to pay Benefit In Kind tax on company cars – it’s just 1 per cent for now, but that will rise in subsequent years.

Motorists will also, no doubt, have to stump up for pay-per-mile road taxes, to cover the huge loss in fuel duty for the Government – thus negating the big benefit of electric cars for drivers: the lower running costs.

The Government’s approach for too many years has been to confront drivers with fewer carrots and more sticks as it forces them to comply with new legislation. And still we don’t form a 32 million-strong pressure group, but instead focus on moving ourselves and the economy from A to B every day without whingeing.

Which brings me back to the most pointless, economically ruinous exercise most of us have seen for a while (and there’s been some stiff competition): the Insulate Britain protests on the M25. I saw a hybrid Toyota Prius in one of the queues on the news, the driver in disbelief that the police, so quick to pull over motorists for driving 10mph above the speed limit on the M25, were doing nothing to help him get on his planetsaving way. I couldn’t see any V12-engined supercars in the queues, though – the ones that planet protesters might actually have some cause to dislike – because most Co2-belching supercars aren’t driven every day of the week: it’s the poor souls who just made the switch to something with a plug, or who drive a Ford Fiesta with a small one-litre Ecoboost engine, who will have been hit the hardest by protesters.

A word of warning for the Government: if the sight of five people lying in the road this week was bad PR for Britain plc, just imagine the day when 32.7 million licence holders finally revolt over a decade of unfair treatment.