Just one question dominated the Commons. Where’s Boris? Having spent most of the morning popping up on any TV and radio station that would have him in order to rubbish the Davies report recommending a third runway at Heathrow, the London mayor and MP for Uxbridge failed to appear at either prime minister’s questions, or a statement from the transport minister, Patrick McLoughlin, to make the case on behalf of his constituents. Was he stranded on the Tracy Island of his own imagination in the Thames Estuary?
No. He was chairing a Transport for London meeting to discuss the bus stops and shelters contract, the 2014 Year of the Bus review and the Croxley rail review, among other things. Who knew Bozza was such a details man? Just this once, though, the forklift truck he promised would be needed to remove him from the site of any Heathrow airport expansion might better have been employed getting the mayor to the chamber.
His absence wasn’t just an embarrassment to himself, as it allowed Harriet Harman to suggest the prime minister was being telepathically bullied by Boris and had been shunted into a neverending holding pattern over Heathrow. If only I could remain in a neverending holding pattern, David Cameron sighed wearily. “We need to study this report very carefully,” he said. “We must be careful not to jump to conclusions.”
There’s no chance of that. Any conclusions that are reached will have to be dragged out of the PM. The Davies report was only ever really intended as a £20m holding operation to allow the government to avoid making a decision before the last election, and the arrival of the 344-page epic is not entirely welcome. Davies has been good enough to let Cameron off the hook by moving the proposed runway about three yards away from the one he said he would resign over in 2009, but while the thumbs-up in favour of Heathrow might suit his chancellor, who relishes any chance to blindside Boris, it puts Cameron on a possible collision course with many influential London Tory MPs. Along with family friends in Notting Hill.
“Good luck,” Cameron whispered to McLoughlin as he left to let his minister take the flak for the next hour. McLoughlin, who had been fidgeting anxiously throughout PMQs, smiled thinly. It hasn’t been a good few weeks for the transport minister. First the backdown on rail improvements to the Midlands and now Heathrow. “This report is a very good report and I very much hope to get round to reading it,” he muttered. And that was all he really wanted to say, other than to announce he would have been told what to think about it some time in the autumn. The statement was as brief as it was vague; it was hard not to feel McLoughlin’s pain at being hung out to dry, as his synapses crunched through the possibility of a 35-mile super runway linking Heathrow to Gatwick.
Nimby after nimby stood up to explain why, even though they hadn’t fully read the report, they were certain that Davies hadn’t made adequate provision for noise or air pollution. London Tory mayoral candidate Zac Goldsmith was so overcome, he forgot to mention he had promised to make this a resigning matter. Let’s wait and see, shall we? Not every amnesiac nimby was a Tory. Labour’s Sadiq Khan was fully in favour of Heathrow when he was shadow transport secretary; now he is yet another mayoral contender, Tooting’s Citizen Smith is firmly behind Gatwick.
All this talk of London made some MPs uncomfortable. “What about Newcastle, Belfast, Manchester, Edinburgh and Manston?” they cried. “What about them?” McLoughlin replied tetchily. It was that kind of dog day. A lot of hot air and not much action.
