The age of motorists' contempt for others, epitomised by Mr Toad, may be finally coming to an end – Joyce McMillan

Born in Castle Street, Edinburgh, in 1859 – but brought up by his grandmother in Berkshire – the writer Kenneth Grahame had just taken early retirement from his job at the Bank of England when, in 1908, he published his great children’s story, The Wind In The Willows. At that time, the age of the motor car had barely begun; and yet still, the brilliantly observant Grahame succeeded in creating the character of Mr Toad, the relatively wealthy, riverside creature who batters about the lanes in his terrifying new machine, yelling “Toot Toot”, and disdainfully scattering lesser animals in his path.

He had spotted the passionate and yet potentially toxic relationship between the human psyche, and the huge possibilities unleashed by the automobile, the “mobile self”; and now, a century on, we find ourselves living on a planet where the natural world Grahame so loved is increasingly trashed, devastated and depleted by the hyper-mobile economy in which we live, by the emissions it produces, and the infrastructure it demands.

Mr Toad arrives by car, of course, at Buckingham Palace (Picture: Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images)

So it’s perhaps not surprising to find that Mr Toad is still alive and well, in the Britain of 2024; and wreaking his own special brand of political mischief. Not all drivers are Toads, of course; for most of the 78 per cent of British households that own a car, the thing is an expensive essential for navigating the stressful demands of 21st century life, in our sprawling cities and suburbs.

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Making car travel less necessary

Despite the daunting scale of the issue, though, most practical drivers – and particularly those concerned to bequeath a liveable environment to their grandchildren – are at least willing to consider measures designed to reduce our dependence on the motor car. Improved public transport, 15-minute city zones where all necessary facilities are within walking distance, better provision for walkers and cyclists, pedestrianised areas – all of these are worth considering, as ways of gradually making car travel less necessary.

Every effort to move in that direction, though, is thoroughly and noisily obstructed by the “Toad tendency” among the motoring fraternity; that militant lobby that frames the right to drive everywhere, at any time, as an essential human freedom, and has set about weaponising transport policy for use in all the current culture wars between unreconstructed 20th-century privilege, and increasingly harsh 21st-century realities.

It’s not a question of whether SNP will do badly in election, but how badly and what that will mean – Joyce McMillan

After the moment in 2023, for example, when the Conservatives surprisingly held on to the parliamentary seat of Uxbridge and South Ruislip – scene of one of London’s new Ultra Low Emission Zones – the Tories were emboldened to try to weaponise anti-Ulez sentiment in this year’s mayoral election, openly flirting with crazed online conspiracy theories about the evils of 15-minute cities and low-emission zones. The Toad tendency in the media cheered loudly, and predicted a humiliating defeat for the mayor, Sadiq Khan; a defeat which, sadly for Toad, completely failed to materialise.

A deadly price

If the Ulez row contained elements of comedy, though, transport policy is also a subject tinged with tragedy. Around 1,700 people die on Britain’s roads each year; and when the debate about how to make our roads safer is hijacked by headlines designed to please the Toad lobby, we risk making matters worse, rather than better.

The war against cyclists is a particular danger here, volubly conducted day after day by many drivers across the land, whose visceral irritation with this young, fit, speedy and virtuous demographic is easy enough to understand at a psychological level, but completely unrelated to any serious assessment of the dangers posed to others by bicycles on the road.

No one, for example, could fail to sympathise with campaigner Matthew Briggs, whose wife Kim died after being hit by a cyclist in London in 2016; but the fact that his campaign became something of a media cause celebre, and almost led to the introduction of new legislation against dangerous cycling, before the recent election announcement, invites questions about why this pedestrian death – one of perhaps a dozen caused by cyclists across the UK over the last decade – attracts so much more media attention than the rising number of pedestrians and cyclists killed by motor vehicles, which runs at more than 100 times that level.

Toad lobby in denial

Then, beyond the continuing tragedy of road casualties, there is the constant pressure to placate the road transport lobby by building ever more road infrastructure – including, for example, the massively expensive dualling of Scotland’s A9 trunk road. And always and everywhere, in the nation’s right-wing press, we hear the sound of siren voices trashing all alternatives to the beloved internal combustion engine.

So what is to be done? According to some in the Toad lobby, nothing need be done. Climate change is a scam, driving with a loud and powerful engine is a human right, and governments and all other road users should simply get out of the way.

Most citizens and responsible politicians, though, now know that that answer is no longer good enough. Denial is an ugly thing, driven by the raging energy it takes to suppress inconvenient truths; but as Robert Burns memorably put it, facts are chiels that winna ding, and sooner or later our great 20th-century love affair with the petrol-powered motor car will have to end.

This week on social media, for example, I saw an interesting exchange triggered by a Toad-style newspaper headline denouncing the Scottish Government’s £200 million-a-year free bus pass scheme for under-25s, as an obvious waste of money.

One woman replied, though, to say that the bus pass had totally changed her teenage son’s transport habits, and encouraged him to feel that he will be able to live his life without driving, or owning a car. A mere straw in the wind, of course; but perhaps one slender sign that with a final defiant Toot-Toot, the long age of Mr Toad, and his domineering contempt for all other road users, may at last be beginning to pass into history.