I didn’t sleep well last night. Bad news day yesterday and a chance to talk about it on BBC Radio Bristol this morning. Media interviews tend to be short lived and you don’t quite know the angle that the interviewer will take. I was on the John Darvall show an hour ago. The motivation for doing such interviews is the chance to reach beyond the professional community on LinkedIn and hope to make a small difference.

What did I manage to get across?

🚗 Within the sector the two words (in polite terms) were ‘dismay’ and ‘anger’ at the PM’s speech.

🚗 I’d been at CIHT Council doubling down on the need for climate action before the speech, and listening to the Chair of the IPCC afterwards in London – quite a day.

🚗 There are positive signs – sales of new battery electric vehicles are up 40% so far this year compared to last year, now accounting for 16% of sales. On our roads, 2.5% of all cars are battery electric. We have momentum moving up the S-curve but what is its shape going to be?

🚗 The car industry is geared up for the 2030 target. The Chair of Ford UK said they look for three things from Government: ambition, commitment and consistency – and the announcement yesterday they say has undermined all three.

🚗 Pushing back the target by five years has implications for the S-curve and the amounts of CO2 being emitted during the interim carbon budget periods.

🚗 Many would say this isn’t responsible in terms of international leadership, something which the Government is very keen to underline it demonstrates.

🚗 There are two fundamental human traits – fear of change and capacity to adapt. We need to adapt – we were able to respond during the pandemic, difficult though that was. Governments were able to make very bold decisions. But of course as we’ve seen in all the tabloid newspapers this morning, there’s emphasis on fear of change and trying to keep people reassured that business as usual is OK.

🚗 We have to have the confidence to change and do so in a socially just way, that’s socially just at a national level but also an international level. And this partly comes down to the way we set taxation rules in this country – these hard working families could be helped by the super-rich if there was a wealth tax.

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