2040? Really? How lazy is that? Keir Starmer will be pushing eighty by then, and I suspect most of the Labour high clergy will be wobbling around in similar age brackets. Whatever happens in 2040 will not be their problem. It hasn’t been their problem for a long time already. Other people—anonymous, future, conveniently voiceless people—will deal with the fallout. And that, of course, is precisely why such a date was chosen.
This is not planning. This is political littering. Kick the can far enough down the road and you’ll never have to trip over it yourself. You get the applause today, the moral halo, the headlines—and someone else gets the bill, the wreckage, and the social unrest. Politics perfected.
Every country should have a small set of laws that sit above all others. Call it a constitution if you like, even if the UK gets nervous and starts fidgeting when that word is mentioned. Names don’t matter. Principles do. And one principle should be brutally simple: any law a government passes must take effect at least one year before the projected end of its term in office.
No exceptions. No clever footnotes. No “strategic timelines.”
If you have four years, fine—spread it over three. If you have six months left, tough luck. Anything you legislate must bite immediately, or you don’t get to legislate it at all. That way, governments are forced—at last—to live inside the consequences of their own decisions and drag those consequences with them into the next election cycle.
Imagine that. Ministers campaigning while their policies are already active. Voters judging reality instead of promises. Accountability becoming more than a decorative word stitched into speeches.
Of course, this will never happen. Accountability to a politician is what water was to the Wicked Witch of the West: fatal on contact. Better to promise paradise in 2040, when everyone responsible is either retired, irrelevant, or dead.
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2026/01/11/labour-set-to-ban-petrol-diesel-lorries/