The Manchester Central Convention Complex began life as a grand railway terminus. As the Conservative Party gathered there for its annual conference, which began on October 1st, awkward questions swirled about the future of HS2, Britain’s beleaguered high-speed train line—and specifically whether the line’s northern leg, from Birmingham to Manchester, would be amputated. No wonder Rishi Sunak, the prime minister, wants to change the subject from trains to cars.

Mr Sunak declared before the conference started that he was “slamming the brakes on the war on motorists”. The use of 20mph zones would be curbed, rules on bus lanes and parking tweaked. Potholes were more of a priority than whizzy trains. That isn’t just a parochial agenda for the leader of a G7 country; it’s also a misguided one.

The idea of making roads a political battleground has its roots in a by-election held in Uxbridge and South Ruislip in July. Against expectations, the Tories narrowly clung onto the seat after a backlash against an ultra-low-emission zone (ULEZ), a scheme championed by the (Labour) mayor of London that makes drivers of the most polluting vehicles pay a daily charge. Mr Sunak’s “Plan for Motorists” is a crude attempt to repeat that success nationally by tapping into other sources of road rage.

Driving in Britain is often annoying, and at times miserable. There are 33m cars registered in the country. Around four in five adults have driving licences; outside the capital poor public transport means many depend on their cars for every journey. In 2022 drivers in Britain’s ten most congested cities spent 80 hours stuck in traffic, compared with 50 hours in America and 40 in Germany. The jams are set to worsen. Traffic could increase by as much as 54% by 2060 because of population growth and cheaper-to-run electric vehicles, according to the Department for Transport.

Even so, Mr Sunak’s claim of a “war on motorists” is hogwash. Few groups have been more coddled over the decades than drivers. To take one obvious example, fuel duty has been frozen for 13 years, at a cost to the Treasury of around £80bn ($98bn, almost as much as the price of a high-speed train line). Meanwhile infrastructure projects have been delayed and fares for trains and buses have risen much faster than the cost of driving. The result is what economists call “induced demand”: more people drive because it is easier to do so.

What’s more, Mr Sunak’s ire is directed at policies that aim to curb the worst impacts of cars. London’s ULEZ is crudely designed but will save lives by making the city’s air less toxic. “Low-traffic neighbourhoods” are designed to make residential areas safer; parents tend to be keen. Cutting speeds in built-up areas is supposed to prevent crashes, which have killed more than 2,000 pedestrians in Britain in the past five years. And because traffic flows more smoothly, studies show that 20mph schemes tend to increase average journeys by less than a minute. In September the Welsh government made 20mph the default in built-up areas, a decision Mr Sunak chided as unpopular. But the same policy has been introduced in Edinburgh, much of London and in other areas across England without causing an uprising.

Drivers can feel unfairly targeted when alternative modes of transport are unrealistic: when buses are slow, trains are unreliable and cycling is unsafe. But that is an argument for improving public transport. Cutting back Britain’s flagship high-speed rail project would do nothing on that score; nor would Mr Sunak’s suggestion of allowing cars into bus lanes at certain times. Speed limits, potholes and parking should anyway be the preserve of local councils, not diktats from Westminster. And fetishising motorists risks storing up bigger policy problems for the future, most obviously the need for some form of road pricing as people switch to electric vehicles.

Might Mr Sunak’s manoeuvre still work politically? Although most Britons support the idea of a 20mph limit in built-up areas, most Tory voters oppose it. Voters in the so-called “red wall”, a stretch of seats in the Midlands and the north of England that the Tories won in 2019, are especially fond of driving. Yet this is a limited electoral strategy. Painting Labour, which also complains that drivers are being “hammered”, as an anti-car party will be hard. And although potholes are annoying, they are not the main thing people want Mr Sunak to fix. ■