Why I Distrust EV Policy in the UK | Cost, Control and the Direction of Travel

Not Everything Is Written Down Before It Happens

There’s something I keep thinking about lately.

Not everything is written down before it happens.

Sometimes people notice a pattern early. They point it out, get laughed at, get called dramatic, get told there’s no evidence. And then a year or two later, the exact kind of thing they were warning about starts to happen. Only then does it become “real” enough for everyone else to acknowledge.

That is how a lot of modern politics feels.

Take electric vehicles.

For years, people said the same thing: they’ll push EVs hard, sell them as cheaper and greener, and once enough people switch, they’ll start taxing them too. Back then, that sounded cynical. People were told EVs were the future, the cleaner option, the smarter option, the cheaper option. But in the UK, zero-emission vehicles started paying Vehicle Excise Duty from April 2025, and the government has now announced electric vehicle excise duty from April 2028 at 3p per mile for fully electric cars and 1.5p per mile for plug-in hybrids.  

That matters, because it shows the pattern.

First something is promoted.

Then it is normalised.

Then the charges begin.

Then people are told this was always inevitable.

And if you questioned it early, you were not “wrong.” You were just early.

Now add another layer to it.

This month, EV sales have risen sharply across Europe, and one reason reported for that rise is the increase in petrol prices following the war in Iran. Reuters reported that in the first quarter of 2026, battery electric vehicle sales in Europe’s main markets rose 29.4% year on year, and in March alone they surged 51.3%. In the UK, EV registrations were up 12.8% in the first quarter, with electric vehicles making up 22.5% of all new car sales. Reuters explicitly tied part of that shift to higher petrol prices.  

That does not mean the war “started because of electric vehicles.” That would be too simplistic.

But it does raise a fair question: when governments are already heavily invested in pushing a transition toward EVs, and a fuel shock suddenly makes that transition more attractive, do they really see that as a problem? Or does it conveniently support the direction they already wanted people to move in?

That is the kind of thing people are sensing.

And the deeper issue is not even electric vehicles on their own.

It is trust.

We are constantly told to trust politicians, trust the system, trust the experts, trust the plan. But what happens when the same people asking for that trust are repeatedly caught in scandals, cover-ups, contradictions and excuses?

This week, Keir Starmer has been under intense pressure over Peter Mandelson’s appointment after it emerged Mandelson had failed a security vetting process. Starmer has said he did not know. Reuters reports that the fallout has already led to the dismissal of a senior Foreign Office official and a parliamentary inquiry.  

Before that, Labour had already taken damage from other controversies, including rows over gifts and hospitality, and Angela Rayner later admitted underpaying property tax on a property purchase before resigning.  

So when people say, “Why should I trust them?”, that is not irrational.

That is the natural result of repeated contradiction.

And this is where the EV issue becomes bigger than cars.

Because if you add per-mile charging onto an EV, that has real behavioural consequences whether the government says so openly or not. If you are on a tight budget, every extra cost changes decisions. A family thinking of travelling hundreds of miles for a holiday now has another layer of cost to think about. The government says the rate is designed to stay below the equivalent fuel-duty burden of petrol and diesel, but that does not change the fact that it is still another marginal cost on movement.  

And once you understand that, the criticism becomes sharper.

You do not need to prove a secret document exists saying, “We want people to stay closer to home.”

You only need to observe that when movement becomes more expensive, some people naturally move less.

That is not conspiracy. That is consequence.

And once you start looking at the wider picture, it becomes harder to ignore how many parts of modern life are being drawn inward.

Food comes to your door.

Entertainment comes to your house.

Work is increasingly remote.

Shopping is online.

Communication is online.

Banking is digital.

Monitoring is digital.

Payments are digital.

Records are digital.

The modern world is becoming more convenient, yes. But it is also becoming more centralised, more trackable, and easier to manage remotely.

That should concern people.

Not because every future fear is automatically true, but because history shows that power rarely stops expanding by itself. Governments do not usually announce the final form of control at the start. They introduce things in steps. They soften language. They dress it up as progress, safety, fairness, necessity, modernisation.

Then later, when the mechanism is fully in place, people look back and realise the critics were not imagining the direction of travel after all.

That is what I think is happening now.

Not every detail.

Not every theory.

Not every fear.

But the direction.

The direction is what matters.

And people can feel that before they can always prove it on paper.

Human beings have instincts for a reason. We notice patterns. We notice contradictions. We notice when something feels off. That does not make instinct perfect, but it does not make it worthless either. In fact, some of the biggest truths in history were first noticed as unease long before they were accepted as fact.

What worries me most is not just the taxes, or the scandals, or the hypocrisy.

It is the mindset behind it all.

Politicians give themselves pay rises, justify their own privileges, and act as though the public must simply absorb higher costs, lower trust, and constant changes to the terms. The people are told to tighten their belts, lower their expectations, accept the new burden, and carry on.

But the truth is this country is not held together by politicians.

It is held together by ordinary people.

It is held together by the people who go to work, obey the law, raise children, stock shelves, deliver food, build roads, pay bills, and keep life functioning day to day. The system works because most people are decent enough to keep it working.

And that should never be taken for granted.

Because when you keep squeezing people, stripping away trust, and making daily life harder while preaching morality from above, eventually people stop cooperating out of goodwill. They move from calm to stress, from stress to resentment, and from resentment to survival mode.

That is when societies get dangerous.

Not because people are naturally bad, but because pressure changes behaviour.

A well-fed, rested, secure population is easier to reason with. A population that feels lied to, cornered, overcharged and ignored starts thinking very differently.

So no, I am not saying every future outcome is already proven.

I am saying we should stop pretending that something has to be officially admitted before people are allowed to notice the pattern.

Because by the time everything is fully documented, fully implemented, and fully accepted, it is often too late to challenge the direction it was heading in all along.

Maybe I will be wrong on some of the details.

But I do not think I am wrong to question the pattern.

And I definitely do not think I am wrong to question where it leads.