Theresa
May hopes Heathrow will bring clearer post-Brexit skies
After
decades of political wrangling, airport expansion gets the go-ahead.
By TOM MCTAGUE AND
CHARLIE COOPER 10/26/16, 12:19 AM CET Updated 10/26/16, 12:38 AM CET
LONDON — Once
again, Theresa May made a big show of a break with her predecessor at
Downing Street.
And once again, as
on her decision on a nuclear plant this summer, so on her big call on
Tuesday to give Heathrow the green light to grow, the current British
prime minister followed the path set out by David Cameron while
seeming to forge her own.
May’s decision
ends decades of political wrangling, court cases and backroom
lobbying and, she hopes, signals to the world that post-Brexit
Britain is a great place to do business.
This was a step, she
told ministers, toward creating “a more outward-looking Britain.”
A new prime minister agreeing on a new runway for a post-Brexit
Britain.
“It’s about a
national decision that’s in the national interest,” May’s
official spokeswoman said Tuesday. The spokeswoman pointed out that
the decision on airport capacity had been “ducked by successive
governments for 40 years” but had now been taken in May’s first
four months in office, despite opposition in her own constituency.
But look closely and
May’s decision appears far less of a break with Cameron.
May has not decided
– in public at least — whether or not to grant Conservative
MPs a free vote on the issue, which is now government policy.
Senior Downing
Street aides under Cameron insist plans were in place for the
decision to be fast-tracked immediately after the EU referendum.
And while prime
ministers come and go, one thing remained constant throughout the
battle: The civil service machine wanted Heathrow and was determined
to get it.
“It’s a victory
for Whitehall above all,” one former senior aide at the Department
for Transport said. “You could say it’s a classic victory for
civil service inertia — or just a victory for hard evidence,” the
former aide said. “Maybe it’s both.”
The mother of all
lobbying battles
Britain’s hub
airport has seen opposition from London mayors, past and present; a
“no ifs, no buts” guarantee against expansion from former Prime
Minister David Cameron and even past resistance from current Prime
Minister Theresa May, whose Maidenhead constituency is just 14 miles
from Heathrow.
Over the past
decade, any number of alternatives have been suggested. Boris
Johnson, now foreign secretary, wanted a brand new floating airport
built in the Thames Estuary. London’s Mayor Sadiq Khan used to back
Heathrow but changed his mind ahead of this year’s mayoral election
in favor of Gatwick.
As transport
secretary, Philip Hammond (now Chancellor of the Exchequer) floated
the idea of “Heathwick” – linking the two airports with a new
high-speed line — but civil servants refused to even begin
preliminary work on the proposal before he was moved to the defense
ministry in 2011 when Liam Fox was forced to resign. (Fox is now the
secretary of trade.)
As a final decision
loomed, Heathrow and Gatwick squared off in the mother of all
lobbying battles.
In a country where
advertising space is rarely given over to policy questions, readers
of the country’s leading newspapers and passengers on the London
Underground would have been hard pressed to miss the rival claims. At
one stage, Gatwick bought all the advertising slots at Westminster
tube station to make its point to politicians.
According to the
Sunday Times earlier this month, both Gatwick and Heathrow have spent
at least £30 million on their lobbying and advertising campaigns,
while Heathrow Hub, the campaign group proposing an alternative plan
to extend an existing runway at Heathrow, has spent around £10
million.
The
behind-closed-doors lobbying campaign will in all likelihood rumble
on, as political opposition to Heathrow — in the shape of Johnson,
Khan and others — gives hope that even now the plan could be
derailed. But the public advertising will dry up, predicted Benedict
Pringle, an advertising executive and analyst of political campaigns
who founded the politicaladvertising.co.uk website.
With costs mounting
“both airports are desperate to get back to promising their
customers a pleasant and satisfying journey through their terminals,”
Pringle said.
At the Department
for Transport — which is now run by May’s close ally Chris
Grayling, the Brexit campaigner who chaired her leadership campaign —
there was never any choice between Gatwick and Heathrow.
In the department’s
view, the battle is between creating lots of equally sized “point
to point” airports around the country or a “hub and spoke”
model with Heathrow dominant, linking the U.K. to the rest of the
world.
Proposals such as
Johnson’s “Boris Island” are little more than elaborate ways of
opposing airport expansion, his critics insist. “It’s classic
Boris – classic ‘cake and eat it’ stuff,” one senior
Conservative source said. “He wants to be anti-Heathrow and
pro-airport.”
Free votes and
resistance
May still has to get
the Heathrow expansion through a parliamentary vote. The government
now faces resistance from all sides, including in the prime minister
and chancellor’s constituencies.
Cameron’s former
parliamentary aide Gavin Williamson, who now as May’s chief whip is
responsible for winning her votes in the House of Commons, told the
former PM before the referendum that he could solve the problem of
backbench Tory resistance to a third runway by granting them a free
vote.
“This runway has
been defeated before and can be defeated again” — Greenpeace U.K.
Executive Director John Sauven
Williamson, whose
job under Cameron was to act as a liaison between Tory MPs and Number
10, told his then-boss not to whip the vote because there was a
comfortable majority in favor of expansion with Labour and Scottish
National Party support.
May has not decided
– in public at least — whether or not to grant Conservative
MPs a free vote on the issue, which is now government policy.
However, she has allowed cabinet ministers with a history of
opposition to Heathrow expansion, notably Johnson and the Education
Secretary Justine Greening, the right to voice dissent — a rare and
almost unconstitutional break from the convention of cabinet toeing
the government line, known as collective responsibility.
There is concern in
Westminster at the precedent May’s decision sets. “How can they
not give MPs a free vote on HS2 [the high-speed rail line between
London and Birmingham] or any other major infrastructure project
now?” one senior Tory source said. “The genie is out of the
bottle.”
Headwind ahead
Beyond Westminster,
Khan and a number of Conservative-run local authorities in west
London are vowing to unite to oppose the proposal, with legal
challenges a near certainty.
Environmental
charity Greenpeace said it was ready to work with Khan and the
Conservative councils to defeat the plan.
“A third runway at
Heathrow would be a waste of time, money and lives,” the charity’s
executive director John Sauven said. “It was a bad idea when Blair,
Brown and Cameron failed to get it built, and it remains a bad idea.
This runway has been defeated before and can be defeated again.”
In the long run, the
decision to expand Heathrow bodes well for Britain’s next big
infrastructure projects – HS2 and Crossrail 2 under London –
because they are strongly backed by the Department for Transport.
Yet, even with
Whitehall backing, cabinet support and a prime minister prepared to
make a decision, the third runway at Heathrow may still not be
completed until 2030, according to the Airports Commission’s own
timetable.
Whatever the final
destination for Britain’s creaking infrastructure, the government
is unlikely to get there anytime soon.
Authors:
Tom McTague and
Charlie Cooper
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