The Tories say 15-minute cities are sinister. That’s nonsense – here’s the truth | Kate Soper and Martin Ryle

Rishi Sunak's risible rhetoric about a divide between motorists and woke' spoilsports is easy to counter - but Labour shows little sign of wanting to do so

Following hard on the prime minister's defence of the drivers who are supposedly victimised by London's Ulez extension, and Penny Mordaunt's rubbishing of 20mph speed limits in Wales (currently in force in parts of her own constituency), we now have the transport secretary, Mark Harper, denouncing sinister ... so-called 15-minute cities".

This dismissal of measures that provide safer, pleasanter and more sustainable urban living is being pressed in the name of freedom": the freedom of city-dwellers to live unharassed by meddling environmentalist do-gooders; the freedom, in Sunak's words, of drivers to use their cars to do all the things that matter to them" - a liberty supposedly under threat from the anti-motorist" Labour party.

Kate Soper is emeritus professor of philosophy at London Metropolitan University. Her most recent book is Post-Growth Living: For an Alternative Hedonism. Martin Ryle writes about politics and the environment. He is the author of the book Ecology and Socialism

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