Peter Rhodes on a doomed petition, a hope for peace and why car theft is good for everyone – except drivers

Thumbing idly through my archives, I came across this snippet from May 2016: “My personal foreign policy can be summed up in four words. Make friends with Russia.” I suppose it's a bit late now?

Tongue twisters for our time: Citizens are shocked by Storm Shadow Starmer.

A friend of a friend woke to find his new car, a big, expensive SUV, had been swiped from his drive. CCTV showed a gang in coveralls using an electronic gizmo to open the doors. It was a professional job and by the time he was awake, the car was probably in a shipping container en route to somewhere hot and dishonest. The police went through the motions but were not optimistic.

While he was going through the wretched, time-consuming business of reporting the crime, it struck me that while this incident was bad news for him, it was extremely good news for lots of other people. The vehicle would need replacing, probably on credit. The next insurance premium, following his claim, would be hiked massively. 

The Government would take its share through insurance premium tax, 20 per cent VAT on the car purchase, first-year vehicle excise duty and an extra surcharge if the car is worth more than £40,000. The list of people benefitting from his misfortune includes car makers, car dealers, insurance companies, civil servants, banks, shipping companies, loan advisers and money lenders.

Politicians also benefit, because every transaction triggered by this single car theft contributes to that holy grail of government – growth (never, ever confuse growth with human happiness). About 130,000 cars are stolen every year in the UK and about 70 per cent of cases are never solved. This is not so much a crime wave as a thriving industry. And you wonder why no-one shows much interest in stopping it?

Several million Brits, doubtless influenced by the Donald J Trump School of Good Losing, have signed an online petition calling for a new general election. The petition claims that voters feel “betrayed” by Labour. It will, of course, vanish without trace. If we kicked out governments every time they betrayed us, the monarch's private study would have a revolving door.