OPINION – SAM LISTER: The zones are coming to Birmingham courtesy of emotional blackmail in the face of hard evidence.
Get ready, Birmingham! (Image: Getty)
Emotional blackmail is the cynical tactic being used to shut down opposition to 20 mile per hour zones. The hated speed limit is spreading across the country under the guise of road safety. In reality, it is raising millions of pounds for the state while allowing so-called progressives to impose their anti-car agenda. Local leaders in Birmingham are the latest to jump on the (soon to be very slow moving) bandwagon, turning the city into a giant 20mph zone.
All local roads will fall under the new speed limit and the council effectively admits its strategy is to make driving such a pain that people stop bothering. The plan proudly declares: “Active travel – walking and cycling – will become how most people get around their locality most of the time. Cars will no longer dominate street life around homes and schools. A limit of 20mph will be standard on all local roads.”
Driving at 20mph on clear roads feels unnatural in modern cars, is bad for business and the public overwhelmingly is against it. But the rag-tag coalition of Liberal Democrats, Greens and independents in Birmingham is unconcerned by such trivialities.
London has already been ruined under Labour’s Sadiq Khan, with more than half of roads now going at a snail’s pace. The speed limit was blamed for the city topping the list of the world’s slowest capitals, according to mapping technology company TomTom.
Analysis of police figures found a staggering 236% increase in just two years of the number of speeding offences in 20mph zones. They jumped from 37,219 in 2023 to 125,133 in 2025, according to the Marshall Motor Group.
Highway robbery is no longer carried out by a masked man with a gun but a progressive politician with an agenda.
In Wales the backlash to the default 20mph speed limit was so furious the assembly was forced to water it down. A petition against the move was signed by half a million people and around 10,000 wrote directly to councils asking them to change the limits on local roads.
Local businesses reported much longer delivery times while care workers were given longer travel times, costing employers more. Polling by YouGov a year after the policy was introduced found 72% of Welsh adults remained opposed to it.
Supporters insist the speed limit has a dramatic impact on road safety. TfL analysed 100 roads in London for incidents three years before and after the limits were changed. It found collisions and injuries went down by about a third and child deaths fell from a total of four to one.
But other road safety measures were also implemented in that time, which means it cannot be sure that the speed limit was the cause.
Meanwhile, a Queen’s University Belfast study of 76 streets concluded that restricting speed limits to 20mph “doesn’t seem to reduce road traffic collisions, casualties, or driver speed”.
It shouldn’t need to be said, but for the avoidance of doubt, every single road death is a tragedy and the loss of a child too unbearable to even contemplate. Reducing speed limits around schools or in particularly busy pedestrian areas is sensible and most reasonable people would support such measures. But drivers are being guilt-tripped into acceptance of something most do not want.
The tactic is summed up perfectly in the challenge laid out by Mat MacDonald, Birmingham’s road safety commissioner. He said: “Anyone who opposes these measures has to come up with a set of reasons, advantages, and benefits that eclipse the value of the human lives that will be saved by this.”
The reality is that so much of life has the potential for tragedy but mitigations are looked at in the round. The logical conclusion of the saving lives argument is that we should abandon our cars altogether as not driving at all is safer than driving at 20mph.
If road safety really was the objective, the limits would only apply in daylight hours, not late at night when there is no one around, and not in low pedestrian areas. But as the Tories say, the restrictions are about “waging war on motorists”. The party has promised to end blanket limits, restoring 30mph in areas where it makes sense.
Shadow transport secretary Richard Holden said widespread 20mph use “slows whole towns to a crawl while doing little for real safety”.
If progressives want to persist in imposing the limit, they should at least be honest about their motives and stop hiding behind human tragedy.