Simon Jenkins: Boris Johnson is right to be furious about London’s airports

Forget lobbyists’ talk of crisis — there is no business case to fly more noisy, dirty planes over the heart of this city
Getty Images
21 January 2014
WEST END FINAL

Get our award-winning daily news email featuring exclusive stories, opinion and expert analysis

I would like to be emailed about offers, event and updates from Evening Standard. Read our privacy notice.

I rarely agree with Boris Johnson. But just now I sympathise with him. His eruption of fury at the Government’s treatment of his plan for a new London airport by the Thames is wholly justified.

Last week Johnson and his transport supremo, Daniel Moylan, described the Howard Davies review of London runway capacity as “something out of X Factor”. Indeed, Davies was compared to Simon Cowell. He had dismissed the Mayor’s Thames estuary proposal out of hand and opted for three alternatives: two for a bigger Heathrow or one for a bigger Gatwick. Under Downing Street pressure, Davies added that Johnson’s Isle of Grain concept might merit “further study” but this was patently just to silence the Mayor. It failed.

Speaking for Johnson, Moylan complained that he was being treated like “a private company motivated by commercial interests”, rather than honouring his electoral mandate to “articulate the public interest” in London’s future infrastructure. Who was supposed to be governing London, a passing Establishment trusty or the elected Mayor?

The essence of Johnson’s case is that Davies is putty in the hands of “big aviation” and its lobbyists. He has a record in this. He ran City regulation when it was in thrall to bankers, and the London School of Economics when it was in thrall to Libya’s Colonel Gaddafi.

The Mayor believes Davies bought the BA/BAA demand for an expanded Heathrow hook, line and sinker, even cutting their estimates of its cost, while loading extra contingency onto “Boris Island” to make it seem more expensive. The giveaway for Johnson was Davies’s dismissal out of hand of the official “third London airport”, Stansted. The airlines hate Stansted and the regulators have allowed it to remain half-empty.

Whenever the word airport is mentioned, one fact should be remembered. Air travel is about tourism and leisure. So-called business trips are less than 20 per cent of the London passenger total (and many of these are freebies). If we are in the game of simply catering for any predicted level of demand, airports matter less than motorways or freight capacity.

Lobbyists who cry that London’s airports are “in crisis” are merely talking for private clients. When the rich seek subsidies from the taxpayer they always claim it is not for them but for “UK plc”. Funny that they never say that of tax credits for the poor.

More to the point, Heathrow expansion is not a planning issue but a civilisation one. Dumping more aircraft capacity on west London should be no more acceptable than building a helicopter port over Blackfriars Bridge. Directing a procession of noisy, dirty planes over heavily populated areas is acceptable in no other city on earth. Why is it acceptable in London?

It was this that led David Cameron in opposition, in one of his many “forgotten pledges”, to promise that when he was prime minister there would be no new runway at Heathrow, “no ifs, no buts”. Johnson understandably took his lead from this pledge and concluded that London would not tolerate such pollution in the 21st century.

The Davies commission was an attempt by Cameron to fudge this promise and postpone any decision. He wanted to avoid committing a blatant U-turn on Heathrow and yet not offend his new friends at BA and BAA, to whom Heathrow’s third runway is a holy grail.

Cameron has not even called their bluff and told them that, if there really is a crisis, they can always use Stansted. Taxpayers should not be forced to commit tens of billions of pounds for new runways when those they have already financed lie silent in the Essex countryside.

A new airport to the east of London was exhaustively surveyed in the 1980s when Maplin was discussed. It was thought too far away, with too many birds. Johnson’s Isle of Grain is less far, and closer to the expanding east London market than Gatwick.

It would make more sense if a high-speed train from the north came east of London. In this Johnson would carry more conviction if he were not both demanding £50 billion for a new airport and a similar sum for the World’s Stupidest Railway, HS2 into Euston.

His argument yesterday that the cost of an estuary airport can be recouped by redeveloping Heathrow as an urban “garden city” for 200,000 people is ingenious. But even Stalin would have balked at such disruption.

Heathrow, like Crossrail and HS2, is in the grip of Cameron’s curse. At a certain point in the evolution of a project, rationality gives way to the sheer weight of lobbying by those backing it. An army of consultants and contractors with money at stake refuse to let go. Heathrow expansion should have died long ago, and Cameron appeared to kill it. But money talked.

Meeting the growth in demand for leisure travel is not a national priority. If Heathrow were really short of “global business destinations” it would stop flying on so many domestic routes. As Gatwick has shown, tourists will go anywhere for a cheap flight. Extra capacity exists at Stansted and a new runway at Gatwick can start in 2017. As for the implication that taxpayers must always meet future demand for travel, what about London’s roads? And why is there still no south coast motorway?

I have long thought Gatwick and Stansted would offer adequate capacity for London, while lesser airports elsewhere can expand. But if the aviation lobby really wants a vast new airport, it should sign up to Johnson’s long-term vision.

The earliest London airports were at Hendon and Croydon. They died bitterly protesting Heathrow’s ascendancy. Today they mostly lie beneath houses and offices. Their message could be that Heathrow’s days are indeed numbered, and that Johnson does get the last laugh.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in