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Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party to target pro-cycling councils in next year’s local elections

Cycleways and low traffic neighbourhoods to become battleground for votes next May, with Tory candidate for London Mayor also pledging to halt active travel initiatives

Nigel Farage says that his Reform UK party will target councils that promote cycling and walking in next year’s local elections in England as the issue of emergency active travel infrastructure, promoted by the government, becomes increasingly politicised – with Shaun Bailey, the Conservative candidate for Mayor of London, also making his opposition to such schemes a key policy as he seeks to oust Labour’s Sadiq Khan.

Former UKIP leader Farage last month rebranded his Brexit Party as Reform UK, with its main policy being to challenge the restrictions in England encouraged by the government to tackle the coronavirus pandemic.

A fortnight ago, in a column for the Mail on Sunday, he dragged out many of the usual, easily repudiated anti-cycling clichés, as well as railing against emergency cycling infrastructure, claiming that “For much of the day these new bike lanes with their endless lines of shiny white posts lie empty while traffic jams block what is left of the roads.”

> Nigel Farage forges new career as anti-cycling bingo caller

Vociferous opponents of pop-up cycle lanes and low traffic neighbourhoods (LTNs) have included former UKIP councillors and candidates, and with the row over the Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea’s decision to remove the emergency cycle lanes on Kensington High Street gaining a great deal of mainstream media attention in the past week, Farage now appears to see opposition to such schemes as a vote winner.

> PM Boris Johnson ‘ballistic’ over scrapping of Kensington High Street cycle lane

Writing in yesterday’s Sunday Telegraph, he described the initiatives as “madness” and accused the government of “virtue signalling,” while also repeating his claim that cycle lanes went unused and caused congestion.

“The volume of cyclists using many of the new cycle lanes is … so low that they cannot be justified,” he insisted. “In far too many cases, all the lanes and road closures have succeeded in doing is cause traffic jams, therefore increasing pollution and triggering huge frustration in a population that has had about as much as it can take for one year.

“My new party will stand candidates against any and every local councillor who backs these new cycle lanes and road closures in next year’s local elections,” he added. “If measures to improve the environment really are necessary, they can only be introduced sensibly,” he added.

Scheduled for 6 May 2021, elections will be held for all county councils in England, and for either full councils or one third of council seats, in the country’s metropolitan boroughs, unitary authorities and district councils.

The London Mayoral and London Assembly elections are planned for the same day, as well as those for directly elected mayors in a number of combined authorities including Greater Manchester and the West Midlands.

Elections are also being held for the devolved Scottish Parliament and Welsh Parliament, and for police and crime commissioners across England.

Bailey, the Conservative candidate for Mayor of London, said in a Daily Telegraph last week that if elected, he would suspend the rollout of LTNs in the capital.

“Over the last few months, Sadiq Khan has pushed councils across the capital to introduce LTNs,” he wrote. “And to be fair, the thinking behind the scheme wasn’t entirely misguided. LTNs are essentially roads that have been blocked off to cars. The idea is that preventing drivers using certain streets as rat-runs will cut pollution, clean up our air and keep drivers moving. Unfortunately, this scheme has had the opposite effect.”

He went on to outline some of the main objections to such schemes, which again do not stand up to close scrutiny, including that through deterring rat-running drivers they lead to more congestion and air pollution on main roads, as well as inconveniencing residents in the LTNs themselves and hold up the emergency services.

He also repeated the claim, also made by Prime Minister Boris Johnson, that the mounting deficit at TfL was due to what they see as Khan’s mismanagement of it since he was elected Mayor in 2016 – although the Mayor insists that TfL was balancing its books before the coronavirus pandemic struck, resulting in plummeting passenger numbers and fare revenues.

> Government appoints capital's fomer cycling czar Andrew Gilligan to Transport for London's board

“Come May, I know what I’ll do,” Bailey said. “On day one as Mayor, I’ll reverse Sadiq Khan’s congestion charge hike, cutting the cost of living so businesses and workers can afford to keep moving. I’ll cut Sadiq Khan’s waste at TfL, investing taxpayers’ money in improving services, not in funding free travel for friends of TfL staff.

“And I’ll suspend LTNs, only introducing one if a majority of residents support it,” he added. “This is how we’ll help to kickstart London’s recovery — and help to lead the UK’s recovery too.”

Much of the opposition to LTNs, and to initiatives such as the Kensington High Street cycle lane appears to come from outside the areas concerned, and while even before the COVID-19 crisis struck active travel schemes always attracted vocal opposition, consultations regularly showed a majority of people in favour of them.

But in recent months, it’s clear the issue has become increasingly politicised and there are signs that the opposition is becoming more organised.

And given the number of votes we have had at national level in the past five years – three general elections, the EU referendum and the elections to the European Parliament – there is a risk of election fatigue setting in among the wider population.

Add to that the ongoing coronavirus crisis, the potential fallout from Brexit and the opportunity that local elections give to whip up opposition to government policy, the danger is that in some parts of the country at least, active travel initiatives could be a casualty.

Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.

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34 comments

Avatar
Gary's bike channel | 3 years ago
2 likes

now i feel compelled to throw this at nigel and have him explain it then.  The shared path was always there, it just got widened a bit recently. So is nigel saying the shared path has caused the traffic queue? Could he worm his way out of it? Cos what i saw was a bike lane being used by kids whilst i was stuck behind aload of two abreast financed wheely cupboards.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rML7zcJPGfQ

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MattieKempy | 3 years ago
4 likes

F****** nazis. Why can't the idiots see that the answer is not to remove cycling infrastructure but to remove drivig infrastructure. I like living, so please let's stop climate change as quickly as possible!

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brooksby | 3 years ago
3 likes

Quote:

“For much of the day these new bike lanes with their endless lines of shiny white posts lie empty while traffic jams block what is left of the roads.”

  

"What is left of the roads" - I haven't noticed anywhere that bike lanes have reduced urban roadways to single direction single lane...  In most cities, it seems that bike lanes take up at most a third or a quarter of the roadways, in some but not all areas, and are a patchwork of such lanes.

I'm pretty certain that the roadways cars can drive on still make up the vast bulk of all urban (and rural) roads...

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thereverent | 3 years ago
5 likes

Obviously this campaign/party is all about promoting Nigel Farrage over everything else. But there is a good chance they will split the anti-LTZ vote in council elections and work against his stated aim.

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matthewn5 replied to thereverent | 3 years ago
1 like

Bear in mind the London Mayor election has preferential voting, so it could be more complex than that, if 'Reform' second preferences go to Bailey.

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eburtthebike | 3 years ago
3 likes

“If measures to improve the environment really are necessary, they can only be introduced sensibly,” he added.

Farage/sensible; brain melt.

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Kendalred | 3 years ago
14 likes

These right wing tossers are very choosy about their love of personal freedom aren't they? No to wearing masks and Covid restrictions, but someone else wants to go about their commute free (or reletively free-er) from the risk of serious injury or death...

I'd like to be as confident as others who have commented in believing he is now an irrelevance, a reactionary sideshow, a muffled hate-foghorn - but he does have an audience that as we know and have seen this past week, tend to shout louder than others and therefore seem to have disproportionate influence. Everything he says is deliberately controversial, and when it comes to our MSM controversy = airtime. Why else would he have appeared on BBC Question Time nearly as often as the presenter during the run up to last years General Election?

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David9694 replied to Kendalred | 3 years ago
2 likes

The good news is that he has no-one consistently around him : the types that are drawn to him are dysfunctional individuals who usually get consumed in their own smoke within a pretty short time of taking up the cause - whatever it is this week. 

there was a piece in Private Eye some weeks ago about the state of the so-called political party - I forget what it said, but it wasn't good. 

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BIRMINGHAMisaDUMP | 3 years ago
19 likes

Facts don't matter to his voters. It's  emotional. People who ride bikes are an 'elite' to them. people in London have spent the past decade being told we are 'a metropolitan elite'. For years we have tried to point out that Farage is the elite - with his private education,  with his media access, his grace and favours property in Kensington, his yearly earnings of 150K +.  But no, just ordinary people, with ordinary jobs, with spouses born in the `EU, (like him incidentally) with children who go to local state schools , with modest houses in modest parts of London - we are the enemy and the 'elite'. He is so divisive. And now he is turning his hate and lies on cycle lanes.  2 

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hmas1974 | 3 years ago
14 likes

Shaun Bailey really is a duplicitous little c*nt isn't he.

LTNs are the responsibility of local councils, not TfL or the London Mayor.

The congestion charge hike was stipulated by the treasury as part of the TfL bailout.

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OldRidgeback replied to hmas1974 | 3 years ago
12 likes

Bailey's sent out emails claiming that the reason TfL is struggling financially is due to Sadiq Khan. He's completely overlooked the fact that the pandemic has caused ridership of the tube, trains and buses to plummet, reducing income. He's also avoided the fact that Khan reduced the debt Johnson had saddled TfL with by 70%. Bailey's a liar.

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the little onion | 3 years ago
15 likes

Actually, I'm worried about this. It's now not just cyclists, but those who support them, who are The Enemy in the culture wars. So you look at all the rhetoric against immigrants (like me) which has led to random attacks, the hostile environment policies, and the windrush scandal. And then to lawyers and those who use the rule of law to frustrate his agenda. And this is what we can expect for cycling. Of course, Farage has never been elected to the UK parliament, but he has forced the Tory party to adapt his rhetoric and policies. 

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Captain Badger replied to the little onion | 3 years ago
7 likes
the little onion wrote:

Actually, I'm worried about this. It's now not just cyclists, but those who support them, who are The Enemy in the culture wars. So you look at all the rhetoric against immigrants (like me) which has led to random attacks, the hostile environment policies, and the windrush scandal. And then to lawyers and those who use the rule of law to frustrate his agenda. And this is what we can expect for cycling. Of course, Farage has never been elected to the UK parliament, but he has forced the Tory party to adapt his rhetoric and policies. 

I don't believe he forced them.

No, they were only to keen to display what they really think

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eburtthebike replied to the little onion | 3 years ago
11 likes

Farage is a hate preacher; it doesn't matter what he hates, as long as he has something to shout about; immigrants, the EU, cyclists.  The man makes his money from hating things, and the gullible lap it up.

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David9694 replied to eburtthebike | 3 years ago
2 likes

Aah, populism...

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gmac101 | 3 years ago
9 likes

This may have less traction than he thinks - In the local elections after the LTN's in East London (prior to COVID) a few local politcians promised to rip the LTN 's out.  If I remember correctly they lost (please correct me if I'm wrong) - once the things bed in they become popular 

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TheBillder | 3 years ago
10 likes

Is Reform UK a party? Or is it, like the Brexit Party, actually a company owned by one N Farage? Which was profitable, in case the European Parliament pension ever felt too little.

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Awavey replied to TheBillder | 3 years ago
7 likes

it is the Brexit Party, thats just its new name

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wycombewheeler | 3 years ago
10 likes

So the agenda of the Reform UK party is to protect the petrol addict status quo? not really reforming are they?

Luckily I don't think the anti cycle lane voters care nearly as much as the europhobes, so I don't see them getting anywhere.

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markieteeee replied to wycombewheeler | 3 years ago
2 likes

But only because there are no drive-through polling stations.

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Mungecrundle | 3 years ago
10 likes

Bit of a come down for the duck faced twat. From fucking over an entire country to fucking over individual progressive councils.

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eburtthebike replied to Mungecrundle | 3 years ago
5 likes

Mungecrundle wrote:

Bit of a come down for the duck faced twat.

Speaking for the duck community, my bill is quivering with rage and anger at this baseless insult; it's a toad for god's sake.  Consider yourself thoroughly pecked.

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Rich_cb | 3 years ago
13 likes

Farage is pretty politically astute whatever else you may think of him.

He obviously thinks there's mileage in this and by targeting council elections which historically have very low turnouts he won't require a huge number of votes to make gains.

Paradoxically I hope that this development helps to ensure that cyclists turn out and vote in the council elections.

Your local council has far more influence over cycling infrastructure than the national government so vote for the councillors with the best cycling policies regardless of your usual party preference.

I will be voting Labour as they have done a very good job increasing and improving the cycling infrastructure in Cardiff.

That's not the case elsewhere though so check in your local area and vote accordingly!

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jacknorell | 3 years ago
4 likes

Can only hope Sir Farcical splits the gammon and Karen vote

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EddyBerckx | 3 years ago
8 likes

London should be safe but more brexity places might have a problem. 
 

or will the shit have hit the fan so hard by then that he is ruined? Probably not, it's always everyone else's fault.

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the little onion | 3 years ago
10 likes

Farage- the turd that just won't flush

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Eton Rifle replied to the little onion | 3 years ago
10 likes
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Prosper0 | 3 years ago
9 likes

Sounds odd. But this is actually good news, for cycling and delivery of good cycle lanes to be a big enough issue for this loon to pay attention to. 

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HarrogateSpa | 3 years ago
13 likes

“Come May, I know what I’ll do,” Bailey said. “On day one as Mayor..."

Save your breath, mate. You're not going to be Mayor, you're going to lose.

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markieteeee replied to HarrogateSpa | 3 years ago
4 likes

That clown from Pimlico Plumbers was planning to stand for London mayor too.

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