Holy smokes.
Normally, had I posed it as a question, you would have answered my headline with ‘doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results,’ right?
In actuality, that is Keir Starmer’s Labour government in a nutshell, emphasis on the ‘nuts.’
Since this miserable milquetoast mush took office, I’ve catalogued so many missteps of his blatantly anti-native British government that it’s hard to keep track of them all. Suffice to say that in the little more than dreary year they’ve been in power after vanquishing squishy Rishi Sunak and the Tories, Starmer’s popularity reflects both his divisiveness and ineptitude.
The quisling is in a record pit of rejection, even among his own fiercely dogmatic and dumbly loyal party apparatchiks.
…Keir Starmer favourability, May 2025
Just 23% of Britons now express a favourable view of the prime minister Keir Starmer, a five-point drop from this time last month and equalling his July 2021 nadir as opposition leader.
However, with the proportion of Britons with an unfavourable opinion of the Labour leader rising from 62% in mid-April to 69% today, Starmer’s net favourability rating has sunk to -46, his lowest ever recorded by YouGov.
This fall in Starmer’s popularity is concentrated among Labour voters, half of whom (50%) now have an unfavourable view of the prime minister, a 17-point increase from mid-April. The proportion with a favourable opinion has correspondingly fallen from 62% to 45% over the last month.
This is the first time Keir Starmer has recorded a net negative approval rating among Labour voters.
Starmer’s government posted the third-highest budget borrowing on record, even as they’ve taken away old people’s piddling winter heating allowances, are going after family farms for their inheritance value, and taxed everything short of the number of sheets of toilet paper per use…and I’ll have to double-check on that…in order to poop some more cash to keep the country afloat.
Britain’s government borrowed almost 15 billion pounds more in the financial year that just ended than official budget forecasters had estimated a month ago, according to data that heaped more pressure on the public finances.
Public sector net borrowing for the 2024/25 financial year was 151.9 billion pounds ($202.1 billion), the Office for National Statistics said on Wednesday.
…It marked the third-biggest year for government borrowing in cash terms on record.
Brits are feeling beaten up and put upon, so believe me when I say they’re watching every proposed spending scheme and giveaway the Starmer regime puts forth, and exploding appropriately when another ludicrous proposal pops forth.
And one just did.
The broke UK government is somehow going to find some £6-700 million they don’t have already to begin offering?
Electric vehicle purchasing subsidies…again.
The UK is to announce a £700 million subsidy scheme to convince drivers to switch to electric vehicles. Officials in Whitehall are this weekend adding the final touches to new policies to address concern about the high upfront cost of EVs and the perception of a lack of charging infrastructure.
Automotive bosses have been waiting for details of the government’s next steps to reduce the cost of buying an electric vehicle outside a company car scheme. Last month’s spending review set aside £1.4 billion “to support the continued uptake of electric vehicles, including vans and HGVs”.
It is understood an announcement may be made this week that up to £700 million of this will be used for subsidies or grants to reduce purchase costs. Whitehall sources cautioned that the plans have yet to be signed off.
Why?
After intense industry pressure, there was a loosening of the insane NetZero standards, previously set in order to begin restricting sales of ICE vehicles. Those, in effect, were meant to force everyone into EVs.
Starmer’s government grudgingly reduced the EV percentage from 28% to 22% of sales before the onerous per-vehicle fines kicked in, yet sales have only ticked up a smidge.
Carmakers are on track to meet existing UK electric car sales targets despite having successfully lobbied the government to water them down.
Electric car sales made up 21.6% of sales in the first half of 2025, only marginally below the 22.06% share needed to meet existing rules once concessions are taken into account, according to an analysis by New AutoMotive, a thinktank.
The Conservative government under Rishi Sunak brought in the zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) mandate. It forced carmakers to sell an increasing proportion of electric cars or face steep fines of up to £15,000 for every vehicle above their fossil fuel quota.
And it’s such a sleight of hand accounting trick to meet the figures anyway that it’s a meaningless joke.
…Carmakers are aiming for a headline target of 28% electric sales to avoid fines this year, but “flexibilities” within the rules mean the effective target – as calculated by New AutoMotive – is much lower.
That is because manufacturers are allowed to borrow electric sales from later years and to gain credit for cutting emissions by selling more hybrids. After the government climbdown manufacturers are to be given more freedom on how they meet their yearly targets and to face lower fines.
What it boils down to is still the basic problem – no one wants the damn things, and it’s just killing their climate cult fever dreams.
…“The headline figures belie the fact that just 13% of private buyers have gone fully electric this year, with growth driven by fleets which benefit from compelling fiscal incentives,” said Hawes.
“The lack of natural demand among private consumers has forced manufacturers into unsustainable discounting and led them to seek increased regulatory flexibilities to avoid the double whammy of having to incentivise sales and pay punitive fines.”
The industry’s answer to the lack of demand is for the government to pick up part of the tab for a product no one wants by ‘reintroducing purchase incentives.’
Oh, yay! That’s exactly what these mah-roons are proposing.
EV grants are back! UK government to offer £3750 discount on new electric cars pic.twitter.com/fpJbTaFFXs
— Autocar (@autocar) July 14, 2025
British taxpayers foot the bill for their commitment to EVs, even as the average British taxpayer/consumer displays no such affection nor desire for them.
Makes perfect sense.
We are powering up our commitment to EV by announcing a £600 million grant for drivers!
The Electric Car Scheme gets you up to £3,750 off a new EV & we’re rolling out charge points to more drivers every 30 mins.
This gov is backing the transition to EV & British business!🚗⚡️ pic.twitter.com/fjYtyB9Di9
— Lilian Greenwood (@LilianGreenwood) July 15, 2025
They’re also making Kamala and Mayor Pete-like promises about big bucks spent on…what was that again?
Oh, yes. Charging stations, etc.
That’s a good one.
…The government is also allocating £25 million to help home-charging for households without driveways. Gullies will be cut into footways to allow cables to run safely beneath paving slabs. This means cars parked on the street can be charged at home. Some 20,000 of these are scheduled to be rolled out between now and the end of 2026.
Ministers also want to incentivise businesses to make the change. Heidi Alexander, the transport secretary, will on Sunday unveil a £30 million package to pay for thousands of charge points at delivery depots, paving the way for millions of groceries and goods deliveries to be made by zero-emission vehicles.
Not only do they not have them, they’re expensive. I got a message today from one of our regulars here, Mark Vandenberg, who’d rented an EV in the Netherlands a couple of weeks ago. They have similar electricity rates:
…I was there just a few weeks ago and decided to rent an EV just for the heck of it. I spent almost $50 to charge it from like 20 to 85% one time!
I sure hope they get on it quickly, because if half as many people read the article from The Times in the UK as read it here in our headlines last week? Their ambitious plans for EVs in every driveway and car park may run up against a harsh reality check and some serious public skepticism that all the subsidies in the world can’t overcome.
Selling you the car before the infrastructure or the technology is locked on is like selling you an egg and insisting it’s a chicken.
I tried circumnavigating the UK in an electric van — here’s why it was impossible
It’s green, it’s eco-friendly … and it can take up to six hours to charge, as Chris Haslam discovered. The road trip revolution is still a long way off
My annual circumnavigation of mainland Britain and Northern Ireland presented the perfect opportunity to try to prove that it was not only possible, but, ideally, a breeze to complete a four-week road trip in an electric van.Volkswagen thought so too, lending me an all-electric ID Buzz five-seater van, in two-tone candy white and bay leaf green, for the duration. The specs were as impressive as its surfy two-tone looks: an 84kWh battery that charged from 5 to 80 per cent in as little as 30 minutes and claimed a maximum range of up to 293 miles.
The job was to survey the English, Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish coasts — a distance of some 4,800 miles — but since I had the entire month of May to complete the journey I set a maximum of 240 miles a day, leaving a minimum 53-mile safety buffer within which to find a charger for my anticipated daily 30-minute top-up. That may sound overcautious, but over the 16 years I’ve been doing this journey, I’ve seen loads of old service stations closed down, but never seen a new one open.
You need apps to find chargers. A single app won’t do because you can’t be sure that it lists all locations, or that it will communicate with the actual charger you want to use so you can get loyalty discounts and receipts, so I downloaded Charge Assist, Electroverse, InstaVolt, Plugsurfing, Pod Point and Zapmap. They’re all free, because they make their money in a variety of ways — that may include commission from charging providers, advertising or data analytics, for example — and soon their icons were crowding my phone.
And there’s nothing like a quick fill-up in an EV when you do finally score that working charger…
…I didn’t know this yet. I was simply excited to be plugging in, swiping my card and then watching in wonder as the output display rocketed from 5kW to 41kW. And stayed there. According to the van, it was going to take two hours and 49 minutes to reach 80 per cent. Even Dave T Dog was dismayed, but imagine how quickly the sweet summer holiday dreams of a family would sour as they roasted in a van in the hot corner of the M5’s Gordano services.
HOT HOT HOT!!!
Businesses in the UK are throwing cold water on the rosy plans as well.
…Chris Ashley, from trade body the Road Haulage Association (RHA), said: “Quite simply without the ability to charge at depot we are not going to see the introduction of electric HGVs, coaches and vans at the pace required.”
The government can call it a ‘charm offensive’ all they want, but the more they spend money that they don’t have to force people into something they don’t want and don’t need, that serves no practical purpose?
The more the British will see it as just offensive.
And that’s insane.
