Ladies and gentlemen, the captain has illuminated the “fasten seat belts” sign. Not only have Sir Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves run into severe turbulence over Heathrow, the flight deck deliberately steered the Labour plane into storm clouds. That’s an interesting choice for a government that was already buffeted by serious unpopularity and it’s a choice that a lot of their own party are struggling to explain to themselves. Anger about the chancellor’s new commitment to back the expansion of the London airport and others is mingled with bewilderment. A lot of Labour people are scratching their heads trying to work out why she wants to burn political capital on a hugely contentious project that couldn’t possibly be complete until long after she’s done at the Treasury and Sir Keir is gone from Number 10.
It was her choice and his. She didn’t have to make airport expansion the centrepiece of her keynote speech about growth. The prime minister, if his title means anything, could have stopped his chancellor had he wanted to. One consequence of the fury about the subject is that it diverts attention from her more welcome thoughts about how to boost Britain’s growth-starved economy.
No one is talking much about building new reservoirs or other features of her growth plan because airport expansion has blotted out everything else. Hostile fire was instant, will be continuous for years ahead and comes from several camps with which Labour has wanted to be friendly. For the incandescent environmentalists, Heathrow is a litmus test of whether or not the government is authentically committed to addressing the climate crisis. Backing expansion is a total fail. They kind of wanted to believe Ms Reeves back in the day when she told the Labour conference that she would be as proud to be “Britain’s first green chancellor” as she would to be its first female one. I would advise her against repeating that line, and especially not in front of green audiences, unless she enjoys being scorned.
Another group expressing disappointment are those who wanted to trust the chancellor and prime minister when they sought to contrast themselves with previous governments by saying they wouldn’t be fixated on the south-east of England and would instead seek to spread opportunity and prosperity across the country. Ms Reeves did touch on regeneration in the north and the Midlands, but her greatest emphasis was on Heathrow and reviving the push to create an Oxford-Cambridge “growth corridor”. That left the impression that she is shovelling the bulk of her chips on big-ticket projects in southern England. Labour mayors in the north are disappointed that, while she gave a nod to the desperate need to create new rail connections and upgrade existing ones between northern cities, there were no promises of cash that they could take to the bank. She declares she’s backing a major redevelopment of Manchester United’s Old Trafford stadium and the surrounding area, but again declines to say exactly how.
To these unhappy groups, we can add a third. These are the Labour MPs and ministers whose crystal balls are darkening with a dystopian vista of years of protest and resistance to Heathrow expansion in inquiry rooms, the law courts and parliament, and from antagonistic Londoners and environmental activists. The airport’s owners first started pushing for it more than 20 years ago, but it has repeatedly stalled before takeoff over the many years since. Under successive governments going back to that of Tony Blair, it has been floated, approved, then unapproved, mooted again, approved again and then cancelled again.
There’s good reason why hot flushes of enthusiasm have been followed by cold feet. On top of the additional levels of noise and air pollution that it would inflict on a very densely populated part of the country, there’s the non-trivial matter of demolishing hundreds of homes, diverting several waterways and rerouting a long stretch of the M25, Britain’s busiest motorway, and dropping it into a tunnel. “This has many years of difficult politics ahead of it,” groans one Labour strategist, pointing to the London mayoral elections in 2028 as one cause for concern.
The government can pray in aid a few supportive voices, but that side of the ledger looks thin. Some business groups welcomed the announcement, before quickly returning to their gripes about the higher taxes that the chancellor is levying on them. A cluster of go-for-growth Labour MPs are rallying to her, but you can also find a lot who are either belligerent towards the idea or befuddled by it. With a massive majority, Sir Keir and Ms Reeves can likely bulldoze it through parliament if they are determined enough, but the effort will cause a lot of trouble and strife in their party.
Is the chancellor discombobulated by the anger and consternation that she has generated? Her people give the impression that she no more cares about being unloved than the typical supporter of Millwall football club. The drama around the Heathrow announcement was no accident, they say. It was deliberately designed to “shift the dial” with international investors by persuading them that Ms Reeves has the grit to prioritise growth over any other consideration. One of her allies puts it this way: “Rachel’s brand as a chancellor is that she doesn’t duck the tough stuff and this is another decision which strengthens the brand.” She is treating opposition as a compliment to her steely determination to implement her new doctrine of growth-at-any-cost.
Where is the cabinet in all this? Allies of the chancellor claim that “we thought we’d have a bit more of a cabinet problem than we’ve actually had”. Half of the cabinet – including Darren Jones, the number two at the Treasury, and Sir Keir himself – voted against a third runway the last time the idea was put to parliament. Another opponent then is still a dissenter now. I’m talking about Ed Miliband, the government’s most committed advocate of net zero, who took his opposition to the chancellor to the cabinet table. He’s telling his friends two things. One that he’s cross; the other that he has no intention of resigning. If he vacated his seat at the top table, Sir Keir would probably fill it with someone less committed to addressing the climate crisis, depriving the cause of a champion at the heart of government and strengthening the hand of the Treasury. And then there’s this. I suspect that the Net Zero Secretary thinks that resignation would be a pointless gesture of opposition to something that may well not happen and certainly not anytime soon.
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Securing planning permission is the first big hurdle. You can already hear the lip-smacking among lawyers who will get rich on the legal wrangling that will accompany a marathon inquiry. The chief executive of Heathrow, Thomas Woldbye, has already conceded that getting the green light for a third runway by the end of this parliament will be “ambitious”. It is not at all clear how the government can reconcile expansion with its legally binding net zero targets. Many think it simply can’t. Some research suggests that airport expansions will effectively nix all the carbon savings from the government’s clean power programme. Ms Reeves talks breezily about flying becoming “cleaner and greener” thanks to advances in “sustainable aviation fuels”. People with more expertise in the subject point out that sustainable fuel is far pricier than traditional jet juice and only available in minuscule quantities at the moment. There are fierce arguments about whether Heathrow expansion would make a meaningful contribution to growth anyway and wildly varying estimates about how much it would cost. Heathrow’s previous plans were priced at about £14bn when an estimate was produced in 2014. At least double that number, probably triple it. If investors can be found to stump up that kind of cash, they will want a return. This will mean higher landing charges, which will most likely be passed on to customers in increased ticket prices. The chancellor asserts, but can’t possibly be confident, that planes will be landing on a third runway by 2035. That sounds worryingly similar to the vainglorious delivery timetable once claimed during the sorry saga called HS2.
Turning the Oxford-Cambridge arc into “Europe’s Silicon Valley” is aiming high and has its own controversies, but at least that is an ambition with plausible claims to be good for growth. Betting on Heathrow expansion looks like an excursion into political Death Valley.
