There’s an interesting conundrum brewing as the political parties start gearing up for the general election.

Over the past couple of weeks we have had the ULEZ row with the Tories proudly stating they won the Uxbridge by-election because of opposition to London Labour mayor Sadiq Khan’s plans to introduce vehicle ultra-low emissions zones to all the outer-London boroughs.

What those very same Tories failed to mention is that ULEZ was a Conservative policy introduced in the first instance by someone called Boris Johnson and the expansion to the outer boroughs was mandated by the Tory government after it was insisted upon as a condition of extra funding for Transport for London.

And much closer to home, we have the thorny issue of Low Traffic Neighbourhoods (LTNs).

Now I’m happy that the experiment of an LTN is Westy has been ditched, if that’s what the people who live there really want. Good luck to them.

But I also note that Warrington Borough Council has come in for a significant amount of criticism for instigating the plan in the first instance.

And yet LTNs were a Conservative government policy. They only came about because the Tories enthusiastically funded them.

In the case of the Warrington LTNs, the government coughed up £370,000 to fund the projects because the 2022 version of the Tories were a little ‘greener’ in their outlook than the 2023 version.

You may also recall there was a lot of anger directed towards Great Manchester Labour mayor Andy Burnham when he put forward plans for a clean air zone that would have seen the owners of the most polluting vehicles charged for using them on Manchester’s roads.

The Clean Air Zone scheme was scrapped because of the “the pandemic resulted in significant vehicle supply chain issues, rising vehicle prices, and a cost-of-living crisis. The original Clean Air Plan was no longer the right solution and could have caused significant financial hardship.”

But why was Burnham doing this in the first place?

The answer is because he had been told to by – you guessed it – the Conservative government which directed Greater Manchester ‘to meet legal limits for nitrogen dioxide on local roads in the shortest possible time and by 2026 at the latest’. 

Now I can’t help but get the feeling that environmental issues aren’t anywhere near the top of prime minister Rishi Sunak’s list of priorities, especially as he seems to believe opposition to (his own party’s) LTN and ULEZ policies is a vote winner with a certain demographic and has been firmly installed as a culture war ‘wedge issue’.

The government has already pulled funding for new LTNs and last weekend, Sunak gave an interview to the Telegraph which ran with the headline ‘I am on motorists’ side, says Sunak as he orders review of anti-car schemes’.

Well call me cynical but I’m guessing the there are some fossil fuel industry bosses who will be delighted to see headlines like that but maybe there are a number of specialist respiratory paediatricians who will be a little less pleased.

But hey, don’t let the health of our children get in the way of a populist policy that might just win you a few votes.

On another topic, back in January I wrote about plans by Churchill Retirement Living to demolish the Sportsmans Arms pub in Penketh to make way for 53 retirement living apartments.

The pub has been closed since 2017 and is becoming an increasingly derelict eyesore on one of the main routes into town. The planning decision was supposed to have happened in April but we are still waiting.

What’s the problem?