Let the many decide airports, not the few

 
6 July 2012
WEST END FINAL

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Another day, another solution to London’s supposed airports crisis. This time Lord Sugar is talking up more flights at Stansted. Last month the Mayor called for a second runway there.

Whichever the solution — expansion at Heathrow, Stansted, Gatwick or a new airport — the industry’s lobbyists are in overdrive. Apparently we’re about to become a backwater sleepier than Budleigh Salterton unless we build a third Heathrow runway immediately.

Perhaps a bigger Stansted’s the answer. But the industry’s projections are based on essentially unlimited oil supplies: rising oil prices could put a big dent in those passenger numbers. Meanwhile a report last year found that Heathrow had more flights to major business destinations than its two nearest rivals, Paris Charles de Gaulle and Frankfurt, combined. It has far more flights to Asia than either.

Last week Stewart Wingate, Gatwick CEO, dismissed the claims that London was falling behind rivals. For, in fact, expansion at Heathrow or Stansted is designed primarily to benefit the business models of BAA and of BA, the latter shifting vast numbers of transfer passengers through its Heathrow hub.

There’s an authoritarian subtext to a lot of the complaints from industry figures, such as BA chief Willie Walsh at this paper’s airports debate last week. They rail about politicians needing to show “leadership” and accuse them of “dithering”. I suspect what they really mean is politicians failing to do exactly what the industry wants.

And they talk wistfully about the ability of China to construct vast airports with no more ado than summoning a stewardess for a refill. But there’s a good reason we can’t: it’s called democracy.

For as Putney MP Justine Greening wrote in this paper in March 2008 of Heathrow: “Rarely has an issue galvanised my constituents so much.” Industry apologists like to portray their opponents as anti-business tree-huggers. In fact, it’s mostly Tory-voting rural and suburban dwellers at the barricades.

Thus west London Tory MPs have been among the most vocal opponents of Heathrow expansion, as has Boris Johnson. Popular fury is why the Government cancelled Labour’s go-ahead for a third runway. It’s also why Stansted’s MP Tim Yeo opposed expansion of that airport (though he now supports a bigger Heathrow).

Now the Government is said to be wavering. As Greening wrote, “If … ministers push ahead, they should not be surprised if residents ask just who this Government is there to serve — because it doesn’t seem to be Londoners.”

Greening is now Transport Secretary. I hope her decision on airport expansion reflects the wishes of London’s voters — not those of a small and well-funded industry lobby.

Ruining Bolly’s good name

This week the Barclays scandal has claimed several victims who really had it coming. But the least-deserving object of popular rage has been the venerable champagne house of Bollinger, apparently a favourite of traders: “Dude… I’m opening a bottle of Bollinger.”

As a Leftie known to address friends as “dude” (years spent in the US), and being very fond of Bollinger (years as a wine critic), I’m a bit mystified by the fixation on these details. Some brands have deservedly suffered collateral damage thanks to their consumers — think Hackett-clad football thugs. Yet Bollinger doesn’t court either the City boys or the bling end of the champagne market. In fact it hardly advertises at all. PR airheads like Bolly, if Ab Fab is to be believed, and now a few neanderthals in pinstripes have shown a rare flash of good taste too. But don’t blame the bubbly.

Biodynamic carrots? There goes the ’hood

I suppose the appearance last Sunday of a foodie market (http://bit.ly/NaiNSL) in my neighbourhood, Herne Hill, will be seen by some as the march of gentrification. Herne Hill was never as edgy as Brixton; still, the spectacle of locals thronging the bottom of Railton Road to buy organic olive bread, biodynamic carrots and rose veal would have been surreal 20 years ago.

And what’s wrong with that? Such indicators of the presence of the professional middle classes can herald a transformation like that of John Lanchester’s fictional Pepys Road in his novel Capital, the most brilliant recent evocation of London’s early 21st-century zeitgeist. But in my ’hood, I think the organic food stalls are just a sign of a thriving community.

Go nuclear on £20bn Trident

There’s a delicious contradiction to the Government’s plans to cut army numbers. Plenty of Tories have an emotional attachment to the army. What’s more, Britain being able to throw its weight around appears to be crucial to their sense of national worth. Yet they’re also committed to slashing Whitehall budgets. And so comes the army’s turn, losing 20,000 of its 102,000 personnel.

For once, I’m with George Osborne. We’ll now be less able to intervene abroad, tagging along behind the Americans to prove we’re their special friends. But it’s absurd that a nation our size will have the fourth-largest defence budget in the world, even after these cuts. If Osborne’s got real cojones, he should cancel the Trident replacement (£20-odd billion): if you need a nuclear weapon to think Britain’s great, you’ve a pretty low opinion of your country.

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