I’ve reached that stage where even paying the bills makes me laugh out loud – not from joy, but from the sheer ridiculousness of the system we live under. Take road tax. Once upon a time, the government decided that if you bought a clean electric car, you deserved a break. Fair enough. Save the planet, save a bit of cash – that was the bargain. But April 2025 rolled round, and like magic, that bargain vanished. Electric vehicles are now hit with the same Vehicle Excise Duty as a dirty diesel Land Rover.
Don’t take my word for it – just look at my driveway. My Mini Electric, once smugly tax-free, now costs me £195 a year to put on the road. Parked next to it is my Land Rover diesel – big, heavy, belching out more fumes than a Victorian factory chimney – and it costs me… wait for it… the same £195. A dirty diesel taxed exactly the same as a clean EV.
And if you think that’s mad, then consider my little Ford KA. Tiny, frugal, barely sips petrol. Road tax on that? £30.
And the cherry on the cake? My 1939 BSA Scout saloon. Not just any pre-war motor, but the only surviving saloon of its kind in existence. A one-off piece of British motoring history, still rattling along on petrol, and it doesn’t cost me a penny in road tax. Not one. So in the warped logic of the British taxman: my unique pre-war saloon goes free, but my clean electric Mini pays through the nose.
You couldn’t make it up. But the government did.
Politics Without Politics
And this is where the rot sets in. Because road tax should tell us something about what our politicians value. Is it about saving the planet? Is it about rewarding efficiency? Or is it, as I strongly suspect, about plugging Treasury holes and making it up as they go along?
The answer is obvious. If they cared about emissions, the Land Rover would cost more than the Mini. If they cared about fairness, the tiny Ford KA wouldn’t be subsidising my great hulk of a 4x4. If they cared about history, they might at least admit that “heritage exemption” means letting filthy old engines roam tax-free. But they don’t care about any of those things. What they care about is money – and the story they spin to justify it changes with the wind.
That’s the problem with politics today. Politicians have stopped acting like politicians. They don’t make choices rooted in values, principles or vision. They act like middle managers in some dreary corporate HQ. Their job is to balance the spreadsheet, nod along to what the Treasury or senior civil servants recommend, and then cobble together a soundbite about “fairness” to feed the media. Road tax on EVs is a perfect example: the policy came first, the excuse was invented afterwards.
And while the government drones on about “level playing fields,” the opposition shouts a bit, but never proposes anything different. They’ve stopped being an opposition in the true sense. No counter-policy, no bold alternative. Just sniping from the sidelines while waiting their turn in the ministerial cars. Opposition as performance art. Moaning without meaning.
Conviction, For Better or Worse
It wasn’t always this way. Politics used to produce figures who, whatever you thought of them, stood for something bigger than their own career. Margaret Thatcher smashed through consensus politics and remade Britain in her image. Jeremy Corbyn offered a completely different vision – nationalisation, anti-war, anti-austerity – and however chaotic his tenure, he pulled thousands into political life. Donald Trump is an altogether different beast, but even he, in his crude and bombastic way, knew how to hammer a message that millions felt spoke for them. Nigel Farage – Marmite to most of the country – nevertheless pushed a single issue with relentless conviction and changed Britain’s place in the world. Robin Cook, in another era, resigned on principle over Iraq – when was the last time we saw that kind of political courage?
Now, I’m not saying all of this was good. In fact, some of it was downright dangerous. Trump’s popularity, for example, was rooted in grievance and conspiracy. Thatcher’s reforms left deep scars. Corbyn polarised Labour to breaking point. But what they all had in common was simple: they had something to say. They weren’t managers. They weren’t parroting lines handed down by the Treasury or civil servants. They stood up, said “this is my policy, this is what I believe,” and for better or worse, they won respect – or at least attention.
Compare that to today’s lot: puffed-up peacocks, prancing around social media, desperate to look busy but terrified of saying anything that might be unpopular. They moan, they carp, they criticise those who do take a stand, but they never offer a real alternative. They’ve forgotten that politics is about vision and choice, not just survival.
Hot Air and Nothing Else
What makes it worse is the complacency. Politicians know we’re fed up. They know the system makes no sense. But they also know they can get away with it, because nobody expects better anymore. When they say “everyone has to pay their fair share,” they’re not talking about fairness at all. They’re talking about money. And when the contradictions are exposed – a diesel and an EV paying the same, a 1939 petrol saloon costing nothing – they shrug and move on. No shame, no vision, just management-speak and waffle.
That’s what really sticks in my throat: politics without politics. It’s not leadership, it’s not conviction, it’s not even serious debate. It’s administration, PR, and self-promotion. Ministers as managers. MPs as brands. The civil service runs the country, and the politicians play at being famous.
And we’re left with the absurd spectacle of a tax system that encourages nobody, penalises everybody, and makes us all wonder what the point of voting really is. If road tax were a metaphor, it would say this: Britain is being run by people who’ve forgotten how to do politics.
So here’s my modest proposal. If the government really wants fairness, they should scrap all this nonsense and just tax us on how much hot air we produce. That way, the politicians would pay the most.