The Labour conference fringe is not a natural venue for sympathetic words on motorists. So it was refreshing to hear Stephen Ladyman, the former roads minister, calling on the government to do a better job of understanding Mr and Mrs Mondeo.
"[voters] believe we don't like motorists," said Ladyman at a meeting sponsored by the Progress think tanklast night.
"They believe that our politicians are a metropolitan group of people who are driven around in ministerial cars or live in big cities who don't need a car."
He never went this far when he was minister last year, but he believed it then too, as the road pricing debate blew up in the government's face.
Referring to the target of reducing British carbon dioxide emissions by 60% by 2050, he added: "The motorists' revolt will make it difficult to do the things that we need to do over the next 30 to 40 years. If we want to get the motorist into a position where they will accept behavioural change [ie road pricing] then we have got to get them onside."
It was a tacit admission that Labour has, at best, failed to listen to motorists' concerns over rising petrol prices and vehicle excise duty changes, and has failed utterly in communicating its roads pricing policy - perhaps because it didn't have a coherent one in the first place. All this resentment has built up against the backdrop of the £40bn per year that the Treasury makes from Britain's 28m motor vehicles.
Professor Stephen Glaister, executive director of the RAC Foundation thinktank, offered one way out for the government. One that the government probably won't take, admittedly, but it's worth considering: establishing an independent roads watchdog that adjudicates on road charges – such as those for a pay-as-you-drive scheme – and helps direct investments in the road network that are part-funded by those charges.
Ladyman had one word for that – "Railtrack" – but it would at least answer one concern: that the public doesn't believe that the government spends motoring taxes on better roads or public transport.
It all looms close to another boo-word, hypothecation, but when a well-rated politician such as Ladyman warns that the government has alienated millions of motorists, ministers should listen.
