He ended with pompous flourish: “You are completely wrong.” Naturally the clip was retweeted by all the tree huggers who appear to have ignored both the enormous black hole in London’s finances which has arguably prompted this money-spinning measure, and the fact that, according to a poll commissioned by the Greater London Authority Conservatives, a majority of Londoners oppose Ulez expansion. When I pointed out that the air is going to get cleaner anyway, due to the proposed 2030 ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars, and that the policy only served to make the poor poorer when the air quality in London wasn’t that bad, compared with somewhere like Chiang Mai, I was treated to a thoroughly “progressive” ticking off. No one has a right to impose that on other people.”

Every month we’re now seeing new studies showing just how devastating to human health that pollution is. Asked if he was worried the London mayor’s expansion of the £12.50-a-day scheme would adversely affect the poor, he replied: “There are some very generous incentives being offered to people to upgrade their vehicles. He is renowned for his Left-wing and environmental activism, so it was hardly a surprise to hear him defend Sadiq Khan’s Ultra Low Emission Zone (Ulez) as we appeared together on the BBC’s Politics Live programme earlier this month.

My opponent was George Monbiot, whose allegiances are probably best summed up by the headline on his latest article: “We’ve had almost 99 years of Tory rule in Totnes. I recently found myself in the perverse situation of defending the poor against the eco-rantings of a journalist from The Guardian.

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