s pledges go, this one was unequivocal. In 2009, David Cameron said a Conservative government would not build a third runway at Heathrow Airport. For the avoidance of any doubt, he added: “No ifs, no buts.” This was the Tory equivalent of President George HW Bush’s “Read my lips: no new taxes”; or more prosaically, Nick Clegg’s promise not to increase student tuition fees. When politicians make statements such as these then they need to be prepared for some spectacular flak if they renege on them.
Bush was harried relentlessly by Bill Clinton during the 1992 presidential election campaign for breaking his word and his specious justification – that he only increased existing taxes while in office and did not bring in new ones – merely compounded his sin by taking the voters for fools. Clegg never recovered from his
volte face on tuition fees, not because the policy was wrong but because he was seen as untrustworthy. In politics, keeping your word is more important than being right.
Only a select few can get away with it. Winston Churchill said on rejoining the Tories after leaving the Liberal Party: “Anyone can rat, but it takes a certain ingenuity to re-rat.” Yet even he was never trusted either by his party or the country until his heroic wartime leadership rendered such matters inconsequential.
For Mr Cameron, the moment of truth is approaching. In the next few days, Sir Howard Davies will publish his report on whether to build a third runway at Heathrow or to expand Gatwick instead. He may, of course, spare the Prime Minister’s blushes by opting for the latter. But if the Airports Commission has concluded that the answer to London’s air capacity problem is to develop Heathrow still further, then the Government will be in a quandary.
Mr Cameron will be held to his pledge by the people living around Heathrow, most of whom are represented by Conservative MPs. One of them, Zac Goldsmith, who is seeking the Tory nomination for Mayor of London, has threatened to trigger a by-election in his Richmond Park constituency if Heathrow is chosen. He has previously said that any attempt to retreat from Mr Cameron’s 2009 pledge (made in Richmond) would be “an off-the-scale betrayal and he will never be forgiven in west London”.
Perhaps the Prime Minister’s horizons are wider than that, but such an accusation would resonate beyond Feltham and Staines. The incumbent London mayor, Boris Johnson, is now MP for Uxbridge in west London and has long been implacably hostile to Heathrow’s expansion. The seats of several Cabinet ministers lie on the flight path. The potential for internal party strife is obvious. The argument advanced by some ministers that Mr Cameron’s pledge was only meant to last for the last Parliament simply won’t wash.
At least if the Airports Commission opts for Gatwick, Mr Cameron is not hamstrung by a promise he probably wishes he had not made; but his problems don’t go away entirely. All the seats around Gatwick are Conservative-held and the MPs have formed an alliance to oppose a second runway there.
There is a certain familiarity to all these shenanigans. For as long as I can remember, politicians have hummed and hawed their way around the London airport question before deciding that it is best not to make any decision at all. The signs that history is about to repeat itself are there already. The Government now says it will not make a decision on the report before Christmas and reserves the right to ignore the commission’s findings.
This is no longer a technical issue (if it ever was) about which is the best aviation option, but a political one: which can be delivered with the least damage inflicted on the governing party and its leader. Sir Howard may well produce a report that helps Mr Cameron steer a way through these competing interests, but Lord Roskill doubtless thought that too. Between 1968 and 1971, he chaired a commission charged with examining the advantages and disadvantages of various sites for a third London airport.
It chose Cublington in Buckinghamshire, but this was overruled by the Heath government, which chose a Thames Estuary development at Foulness in Essex. However, in 1974, the Labour administration abandoned that idea and Stansted – which Roskill had eliminated as an option – was developed instead.
This, then, has long been a story of prevarication and political cowardice and there is no reason to believe that the conclusion of the Airports Commission will be any more acceptable than Roskill’s was more than 40 years ago, when Heathrow handled some 15 million passengers annually, compared to 74 million today. The congestion difficulties in the South East have become more pronounced because of a 40-year moratorium on Gatwick’s expansion, which expires in 2019.
Certainly, Gatwick’s supporters believe the only way to get extra capacity is to agree to a second runway because Heathrow’s expansion, whatever the economic case, will simply prove too controversial and disruptive. “Even if Davies recommends Heathrow it just won’t happen,” one senior Gatwick executive told me. “It needs political consensus and it doesn’t exist. In any case, a third runway would not be enough and another would be needed in 20 or 30 years’ time – but there would be no room at Heathrow.”
Davies has been looking at how to retain London’s status as a global hub in the face of competition from continental airports. But Gatwick’s champions contend that this is a fallacy and the best answer is to encourage regional competition to boost passenger traffic at Manchester, Birmingham and other airports.
In this newspaper in 2012, Michael O’Leary, chief executive of Ryanair, proposed a market solution whereby the Government gave permission to Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted each to build a new runway and let the airlines decide where they would prefer to fly. At least that would have the virtue of taking the decision out of the hands of politicians, who have been making such a mess of it for more than 40 years. But it would not resolve Mr Cameron’s “no ifs, no buts” predicament.
The Tory election manifesto promised nothing more than “to respond to the Airports Commission’s final report” which it could do by putting the recommendations to a vote in the Commons, though it is impossible to predict how this would go. Mr Cameron must dearly hope that the Airports Commission makes his life easier by opting for Gatwick. But even if it does, would MPs support it in a free vote? Labour has been all over the place on a third runway at Heathrow but it was once official party policy; meanwhile the SNP support it. Polls show that most MPs are in favour of Heathrow.
Gatwick has spare capacity and its expansion would be cheaper and less disruptive. However, the transport links from London, both road and rail, leave a great deal to be desired. The expectation among business leaders is that the Commission will plump for Heathrow because the economic case is better. But as we have seen before, the most likely final resting place for Sir Howard’s report is a dusty shelf, somewhere in Whitehall.