I got a letter this week informing me how much it would cost to renew my car insurance: £2,671.47, up from £1,587.86. It could be worse, I suppose. Owners of Range Rovers tell me that the cost of insuring one in London for a year is about the same as the replacement value of the car. But even so. This is a seven-year-old VW Touran we’re talking about. Not the first choice of London’s crack regiment of car thieves.

I will not capitulate to the soft totalitarianism of the professional-managerial class 

The really depressing thing is this quote came before I’d notified the insurer of the three points Caroline has been given for going 26mph on the Finchley Road, which is now a 20mph zone. She couldn’t do the speed-awareness course because she’d already used up her one life – although the course may have to be renamed if people are given the option of doing it after being caught ‘speeding’ at 26mph. I remember when you could be pulled over for going that slowly. I look forward to the remake of Speed, the Keanu Reeves thriller, only this time it’s set in London and the runaway bus is wreaking havoc because it cannot go under 20mph. In the not-so-thrilling climax, the bus inches towards the Finchley Road at 26mph, gradually overtaking motorists observing the speed limit.

I’m thinking seriously about giving up the car, and not just because of the insurance cost. My seven-year-old VW is compatible with the Euro 6 emissions rules for diesel cars, which means I don’t have to pay the Ulez charge. But it surely won’t be long before I do – possibly as soon as next year, when the Euro 7 emissions standard comes into force. And even if I manage to dodge that bullet, Ealing council is intending to turn Acton into a 20-minute neighbourhood. The council says it has no plans to restrict the use of cars, but the glossy brochure designed to sell the proposal to local residents mentions ‘traffic calming’ measures.

Then there’s the fact that driving anywhere in central London is a miserable experience. The 20mph speed limit on most roads isn’t much of a privation, since the cycle lanes that sprang up everywhere during the pandemic, including on major arteries like the Euston Road, have turned the city into a giant traffic jam. On the other hand, the potholes are now so bad that driving in London is like trying to traverse the surface of the Moon, so perhaps averaging 5mph is for the best.

The only time we use the car during the week is to take the dog for a walk in Gunnersbury Park and to visit Caroline’s mum in Highgate. After we got the insurance quote, we sat down and calculated it would be cheaper to ditch the car and use Uber to make those journeys, particularly when you factor in road tax, fuel costs, maintenance costs and depreciation. True, I occasionally drive to QPR away games, but I prefer going by train now that I’ve got a senior rail card and it’s not ruinously expensive.

The only thing stopping me from giving up the car is that it would feel like an act of surrender in the war on motorists. Various organs of the state, as well as some parts of the private sector, are so hellbent on meeting the ludicrous net-zero target that they’re combining to raise the cost of car ownership until only the super-rich can afford them. But I don’t want to give up the freedom and autonomy that comes with having a car, particularly as public transport becomes ever more crowded and unreliable. It would be like selling my house and throwing myself at the mercy of London’s cut-throat landlords. As a freeborn Englishman, I have a patriotic duty to defend our car-owning democracy and that means hanging on to my VW Touran, even if a rational analysis tells me to get rid of it.

In the end, I decided to call the insurance company to see if I could get the premium down. Turns out, the reason it was so high was because Caroline had added Ludo, my 18-year-old son, to the policy so he can learn to drive. Once he’d been removed, the price came down to £607.43, even allowing for Caroline’s three points. I’d like my children to have their own cars one day, but they can surely learn in their driving instructors’ vehicles without me having to shell out an additional £2,000 a year on insurance.

So I’m going to keep the car. I may not use it very often, if at all, because it’s so inconvenient, but I cannot bear the thought of staring at an empty driveway every day, knowing it’s a symbol of my capitulation to the soft totalitarianism of the professional–managerial class. To paraphrase Braveheart, they may take our lives, but they’ll never take our motors.