An unavoidable battle over road pricing could destroy Keir Starmer's government – here's how he can avoid disaster

Nobody cares now but in a few years it will be the culture war to end all culture wars

Keir Starmer now squats like a toad across British politics, to paraphrase Tim Shipman’s famous words about Boris Johnson.

That tweet was sent less than three years ago – a time when Johnson was at the height of his power, and despite Starmer having had over a year to turn things around as leader, Labour’s polling position was still flatlining. It was also just months after the disaster of the Hartlepool by-election, and around when The Times reported that Boris was planning for “another decade in power”.

It goes without saying then that a lot can change in politics, rather quickly.

So as exciting as it will be in the early hours of July 5th, watching enormous Tory majorities getting swept away by a tidal way of incrementalist, technocratic, social democracy, it’s almost certain that the good times will not last forever.

Part of this is just how politics works. As you do stuff in power, you necessarily have to pick fights and make enemies. You accrue political capital in elections, so that you can spend it to deliver the policy outcomes you want when in office.

But if a Prime Minister is not careful, instead of slowly running down their capital over many years, they can also blow their whole project up rather quickly – as Boris Johnson clearly demonstrated.

So if Keir Starmer actually wants to deliver the ‘change’ he has been promising, it means that he is going to have to avoid stepping on dozens of landmines that could blow up his Premiership. This will be especially critical if we take seriously the claim that delivering his missions will require a “decade of national renewal”, because by definition that means he needs to win the next election too.

If he’s lucky, the genie chained up in his basement will continue to grant wishes, and the Tories will – as widely predicted, including by me – go completely mental for a bit, rendering them unelectable for at least another term, making his job easier.

But if he’s unlucky, his leadership could meet a premature end by stepping on one of many of the landmines laid out ahead of him.

For example, some mines are international nightmares beyond our control: Another Trump term, Putin continuing to dick about in Eastern Europe, or China invading Taiwan. Any of those things could spoil Starmer’s plans.

However, there are also domestic mines too – where a sufficiently prepared British government could conceivably diffuse them before they become a problem.

These are the immediate potential crises – the items on Sue Gray’s ‘Shit List’, like the NHS falling apart, prisons running out of space, and further councils going bankrupt.

But there are also the landmines that nobody wants to approach: The difficult decisions and political choices that whoever is in power is going to have to make, in response to macro-trends like climate change and shifting demographics, if we want to still have functioning state in the middle-distance future.

And it is nestled in this long grass where I think we can find one of the most dangerous landmines of all. It’s a munition so powerful that if carelessly stumbled over could blow up Labour’s now expansive electoral coalition, and could offer the Tories a credible path back to power.

But what is the problem? Not Brexit, planning reform, or the Postcode Address File – though those are all issues that Labour will also have to face head-on.

The landmine I’m talking about this week is the unavoidable battle to come over road pricing.

You might not have heard much about it, but in the not too distant future it’s going to be the issue that will invite acrimony, feed conspiracy theories, and necessarily piss off millions of voters. It could become the culture war to end all culture wars – and it’s inevitable that it is going to explode in the next few years.

So if he wants a decade in power, Keir Starmer is going to have to do his best to ensure a controlled explosion. So let’s dig into why it’s going to be a big deal, why it is going to be a political nightmare – and how Starmer can stop the issue blowing up in his face.