What is Nigel Farage’s political company of grifters proposing for Croydon? To remove current 20mph speed limits on our streets. Columnist ANDREW FISHER, right, lays out the science and the facts in the face of far-right rhetoric
I’ve lived in Croydon for nearly 20 years, have had two children here, and for all its many faults, I love the place. I walk everywhere – to the shops, to pubs and occasionally restaurants, to my youngest child’s primary school, and to the station, tram stop and bus stop.
Walking with a young child makes you particularly conscious of road safety. As a parent, it’s your duty to keep your child safe and teach them how to be safe when crossing roads.
In the past week, the Reform party in Croydon posted some literature that promised, “To get Croydon moving we will roll out the removal of 20mph speed limits and return to a 30mph default speed limit”. It’s an idea straight out of the pro-car Peter Morgan playbook.
When I was a child, more than 40 years ago, nearly 6,000 people died on Britain’s roads every year. More recently, that death toll has fallen to around 1,600 per year – a reduction of more than 70%.
There is no single factor that has contributed to that. Cars have become safer for their occupants with technology such as roll cages, crumple zones, airbags and so on. But the widespread introduction of 20mph zones in parts of the country has undoubtedly also been a factor, as numerous studies have shown.
We know that Reform are very relaxed about death, so much so, as Inside Croydon first reported, that they selected a dead woman to be their Croydon Mayoral candidate for 2026.
But for those of us who enjoy living and who wish our fellow citizens well, too, reducing speed and saving lives is more important than being able to drive a bit faster.
The evidence is clear: 20mph speed limits work. They reduce fatalities and serious injuries.
RoSPA, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, found that a pedestrian who is hit by a car travelling at between 30mph and 40mph is between three-and-a-half and five-and-a-half times more likely to be killed than if they were hit by a car travelling at below 30mph.
In Wales, where 20mph has become the norm for most roads, there have been 100 fewer people killed or seriously injured. The number of casualties between July and September 2024 was also the lowest for the three-month period since records began in 1979.
The devolved Northern Ireland government is currently pushing to introduce more 20mph zones because, “If a child is hit by a car at 30mph, they have a 50% chance of survival. If a child is hit by a car at 20mph, they have a 90% chance of survival.”
A few years ago, Transport for London reviewed the impact of the widespread rollout of 20mph zones in London. They found a 35% reduction in collisions, and a 34% reduction in serious injuries and deaths.
A study of 40 different cities across Europe found that 30km/h speed limits (about 20mph) have led on average to a 37% reduction in road crash fatalities, an 18% reduction in emissions (improving air quality for everyone) and even a 7% reduction in fuel consumption – which is handy for drivers in the midst of a cost-of-living crisis.
You can read the evidence for yourself by clicking on this link.
In our borough, tens of thousands of children walk to school every day. These are life and death policies.
Grifter: Nigel Farage, who somehow managed to break parliament’s financial rules
So what is motivating Croydon Reform to reject all evidence and advocate a policy that kills and maims?
As will be no surprise to Inside Croydon readers, this attack on road safety is among ideas that were put forward by local Reform member Peter Morgan. Like so many members of Reform, Morgan is an ex-Conservative – although he was ultimately deemed too cranky even for them, and expelled.
Former Prime Minister David Cameron once described UKIP, Nigel Farage’s predecessor party, as being riddled with “fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists”. Morgan even managed to get himself kicked out of UKIP, too.
Morgan has now found refuge in Reform, the limited company led by Farage, the MP for Clacton who was this week found to have broken parliamentary rules by failing to declare properly his external earnings.
As well as opposing 20mph zones, Morgan has also campaigned against traffic calming measures around schools, cycle lanes and even children walking to school – as has been well-documented by Inside Croydon.
Reform: Peter Morgan
At the end of last year, Morgan was lobbying with Croydon Reform members to make scrapping the tram network the party’s policy in Croydon – to local officials’ considerable discomfort once Inside Croydon published Morgan’s internal emails.
Morgan aside, there is a rising phenomenon among far-right parties like Reform for championing evidence-free, me-first, anti-social policies. It’s all very Trump-like in normalising spite, division and selfishness, and ignoring the facts.
But we must also look to ourselves: have we, as a society, become more insular?
We are increasingly cocooned in our own world in which we shop online rather than in our local community, stream films rather than go to the cinema, and mindlessly scroll through our phones rather than engage with our neighbours and fellow commuters. And all the while, algorithms push ever more extreme and conspiratorial content onto our screens.
The rollout and support for 20mph zones was a recognition of balance and compromise. Driving that little bit slower keeps children safer, reduces pollution and it keeps people alive – motorist, cyclist and pedestrian alike.
As Charlie Chaplin says at the end of his cinematic masterpiece The Great Dictator:
“We don’t want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone … Greed has poisoned men’s souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in …
“Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men’s happiness.”
- From 2015 to 2019, Andrew Fisher was the Labour Party’s Director of Policy under Jeremy Corbyn
- Fisher is also the author of The Failed Experiment – and how to build an economy that works, and now writes columns for InsideCroydon, the i newspaper and is a regular pundit on BBC and Sky News programmes
As well as his column, Andrew is conducting podcast interviews, in-depth and informed, with specialists and national figures, sharing their expertise with Croydon. They include an exclusive with Paul Holden, the author of the explosive new investigative book, The Fraud. It’s well worth a listen.- It’s available now on Inside Croydon’s Spotify channel
Andrew Fisher’s recent columns:
- In one-hour interview, pandering PM Starmer offers no answers
- That was the year that was – and 2026’s prospects look bleak
- 12,500 Croydon children lifted out of poverty by scrapping the two-child benefit cap. But what about homelessness?
- Now even Mayor Perry agrees we need to Fund Croydon Fairly
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ROTTEN BOROUGH AWARDS: Croydon was named among the country’s rottenest boroughs in 2025, for an EIGHTH time in nine years, in Private Eye magazine’s annual round-up of civic cock-ups
- Inside Croydon is a member of the Independent Community News Network
Many of the 20 mph zones make sense especially narrow residential streets and those near schools. That said, the lack of actual enforcement renders them meaningless. Those where I live have seen little behavioural change. Without cameras or full width speed bumps there’s nothing stopping often ludicrous speeds being driven.
On major roads, however, many 20 mph zones have been imposed where 30 mph was safe and where traffic congestion is worsened with more pollution.
TfL’s radio adverts only focus on speed. By inference it’s fine to be hit at 20 mph but no faster. There is nothing to suggest that not being hit in the first place might be a better message.
I grew up in the 60s and 70s where road safety was drummed into us and pretty much exclusively about not getting hit by a moving vehicle. In my late 60s I can still remember those basic lessons.
Everyone is responsible for their own safety first and foremost. It would be good to see that message rather than the onus entirely on the road user.
Not “far-right” just common sense.
With power comes responsibility.
The laws of physics – unchanged, as far as I know, since the 60s/70s – give us the following. Potential peak power output in watts / kinetic energy in joules.
Child pedestrian in a hurry to get to school: 50W. 40J.
Mum on a shopper bike, 12mph: 100W. 1200J.
Roadie cyclist bombing along on their way to work, 20mph: 250W. 3000J .
Average crossover SUV at 30mph: 50,000W. 150,000J.
Artic lorry at 40mph: 500,000W. 3,200,000J.
The responsible thing to do for ones own and everyone else’s safety is to deploy no more energy than strictly needed. Unfortunately most people aren’t that civic minded or are ignorant of the basic physics at work here. (And there are some who enjoy projecting power while shrugging off any attempt to make them take responsibility).
So we need rules like 20mph to try and level the playing field a little.
“Reform backs policy that could see children killed on our roads”. Not could. Will. And not just kids, either. Pedestrians and cyclists of all ages and older people.
This misanthropy dressed up as policy isn’t confined to Reform either. Last week rent-a-gob bandwagon jumper Chris Philp, Conservative MP for Croydon South and Shadow Home Secretary, tweeted that “blanket 20mph limits are a fixation of the anti-car left, used as a way of getting at motorists. 20mph limits should only be used selectively, carefully and only where completely necessary.”
Hanging out with the Coulsdon nonce must have warped Philp’s fragile little mind
Policies which appeal to the bone idle majority who drive even more than they breathe might win Reform some votes (but not mine because I don’t have a fume-belcher any more), but surely anything which favours the notoriously evil Peter Morgan is going to cost them almost as many votes ?!
name em, shame em!
Hitler would have been proud of Deform!
“Protect Are Wiminz” from a party who’d, given half a chance, repeal domestic abuse laws.
“Protect Are Kids” from a party opposed to 20mph zones, school streets and traffic controls.
Thugs and charlatans, the lot.