You may be under the pleasant impression that this is still a free country. If, for example, you wanted to buy a petrol car – which is perfectly legal – surely you would be free to do so. Well, not exactly.
In some places, there is now a waiting list: if you order a petrol car now, you will have to wait until February for delivery.
The problem is not that the manufacturers cannot make them fast enough. Instead, rationing has been imposed by the Government, which has ruled that at least 22 per cent of cars sold in Britain must be electric. In order to avoid extortionate net-zero fines, the roll-out of petrol vehicles must be delayed.
Manufacturers are not refusing to sell electric cars out of malice. Sales figures simply reflect consumer demand: petrol cars are cheaper and easier to maintain than their electric counterparts, and so tend to sell better. But never mind what the people want. Our personal decisions are only valid if they are in service of some broader political goal.
Targets originally imposed by the Tories have mandated that we give up petrol cars to an increasing degree between now and 2030. We, the people, have no say in this. Do you think that the current government would hold a referendum on the subject? Of course not.
No, politicians are intent on virtue-signalling their willingness to save the planet, even if the actual policy makes little difference on a global scale. They are in the happy position of being able to do this at the expense of the public.
And what an expense this can be. If you drive a petrol car, you are already heavily penalised with road tax from which electric cars are exempt. Drivers of petrol cars won’t benefit from lavish green subsidy spending, as the state ploughs cash into schemes attempting to create an artificial price parity.
Labour wants the current demand for 22 per cent electric sales to rise to 100 per cent by 2030. (The Tories wanted to reach 80 per cent in 2030 and hit 100 per cent in 2035). It is almost impossible to imagine the burden this will place on manufacturers.
I am old enough to remember when British governments thought it important to support the British car industry. How things have changed. We produce almost half the cars today than we did five years ago. The Government is now set on giving a rapidly declining industry an extra push downwards.
Who will be the beneficiary of these policies? Presumably, the Chinese companies that do not have to bear our inflated domestic fuel and steel costs. Their electric cars are cheap enough for the industry to pose a major threat to its European and American counterparts.
We are therefore effectively subsidising China – a country whose government persecutes the Uyghurs, threatens an invasion of Taiwan, and commits other miscellaneous acts of bullying against Vietnam, the Philippines and Australia.
It is also a country that builds about 30 or more new coal-fired power stations a year, more than the rest of the world combined.
Who would be surprised if, in a few years’ time, the Government were to decide that the extra CO2 produced in making an electric car, and the toxicity of the minerals dug up to make the batteries, mean that electric cars are a bad idea after all.
It would not be the first U-turn: our masters bullied us to buy diesel cars not so long ago, and then did a handbrake turn. When it comes to cars, politicians of all stripes seem to make one rotten decision after another.