It might be thought that one of Ms Jackson’s first priorities was to stop Loughborough University running its new degree course in car salesmanship But no: selling new cars can be good for the environment. Sure, they use a lot of energy to make, but their emissions standards are higher. Planning permission for out-of-town shopping and leisure complexes should be almost impossible to get in future. And the tax on petrol will go on rising by 5 per cent more than inflation every year. So far this has not had a noticeable effect on car use, but eventually it must encourage us to buy cars with smaller engines This leads to the paradox of the green car salesperson. More people are travelling longer distances to work by car; people are using their cars more for shopping, school runs and entertainment; and more and more freight is carried by road.Some of the necessary decisions were taken by the Conservatives.

This means relying on more than national gridlock to halt and reverse many of the trends of modern life. There are a few projects whose future is now in doubt, such as more lanes on the M25, but essentially all the increase in future traffic will have to be accommodated on the roads we have already got.This leaves the Third Way, the famous escape route taken by politicians, especially Tony Blair, student revolutionaries and leader-writers. However, after two decades of intensive motorisation, we have arrived at a junction and have a choice of routes. During 18 years of government by the Car Party, the number of private metal wheeled boxes in Britain rose from 15 million to 25 million. Over the next 10 years, the number is officially forecast to exceed 30 million, and each one is likely to be used more, so that the total amount of traffic on the roads is expected to increase by between 55 per cent and 87 per cent by 2025.
That route ought to be marked with one of those quaint American roadsigns: “Wrong Way”. But it is the way we are going if all we are going to do is “raise awareness”.

That way, the problem of what Ms Jackson called car-dependency will be solved by congestion. When we hear politicians talking about raising awareness, we know it means they want to do something unpopular but need to soften up public opinion first. We live not just in a car economy but a car society and a car culture, a process which seems to have reached a state of saturation but actually has much further to go yet. These things are desirable in any case, but they are not enough.There is another route into the future, marked “Predict and Provide”, which has been coned off The last government effectively stopped building new roads. Existing road space will be used more efficiently, as people stagger their journey times, get better and better black boxes on their dashboards to tell them how to dodge jams and the technology of traffic management becomes more sophisticated.

This week the Government issued its first air-quality alert of the year, and Glenda Jackson, a minister in the new merged Environment and Transport department, urged us to kick our car habit She was only urging, of course, not announcing action. She wants to “raise awareness” of the problems caused by the growth of car traffic. What are the big social changes for which this government will be remembered? As we gaze out from the 18th floor of the Canary Wharf tower, our view of the future is hazy – it is the smog, of course. The large underground space is to be used for workshops and storage That is too prosaic a solution. Knowing how Julia Peyton Jones has championed Damien Hirst’s pickled sheep and cattle at the Serpentine, she should turn the basement into Britain’s first art gallery slaughter house..