Tories should never have taken their Ulez challenge to court

Expanding London’s Ultra Low Emission Zone (Ulez) may be a bad policy, a regressive tax which will impact on people of modest means while leaving the not-very-much-less-polluting cars of the wealthy untouched. But that doesn’t mean the High Court is wrong to reject the case brought by Conservative councils against the scheme. On the contrary, anyone who values democracy should be pleased that Ulez has been thrown back into the political arena, where it belongs.

It is alarming the way that so many matters of public policy now end up being dragged through the courts under the judicial review process. How we impose motorist taxes, whether we build rail lines, runways and so on should be a matter for our elected representatives – whom we can punish through the ballot box for bad decisions – not for unelected judges. For a judge to have the ultimate say over a political decision like this turns us into a kritarchy – the rule of judges.