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David Cameron has devoted an extraordinary amount of time, and expended a good deal of political capital, campaigning for gay marriage. It was a bizarre decision, given that this battle was won by Tony Blair with his sensible compromise of civil partnerships. As equalities minister, the Liberal Democrat Lynne Featherstone was insistent about a gay marriage law, no matter how many people it might offend. She was out to sow discord where there had been harmony. She has now been moved.
And of course, the hug-a-hoodie approach to crime was finally ditched with the replacement of Kenneth Clarke by Chris Grayling at the Ministry of Justice. His rehabilitation represents the demise of the socially liberal ideology which due to its narrow appeal failed miserably to win Cameron an outright victory at the last general election. Back then the Conservatives were worried about being seen as the ‘nasty party.’ Now Cameron’s greater fear is of being seen as the leader of the useless party. This week, pragmatism triumphed over ideology.
Last week, the Conservative backbencher Tim Yeo asked David Cameron whether he would be a ‘man or mouse’ over a third runway at Heathrow. This week David Cameron gave his answer. He removed Justine Greening from her job as transport secretary, clearing the way for a U-turn by neutralising cabinet opposition to a third runway.
There is nothing brave, mighty or pragmatic about demolishing two villages in order to build a short extra runway at Heathrow. As Ms Greening argued on the Today programme last week, the runway would be too short to receive the jumbo jets from China which some lobbyists have claimed as justification for the project. Expanding Heathrow would be typical of the fudged quick-fix which has characterised infrastructure development in Britain for 50 years. It is an approach which has given us, over and over again, inadequate roads to which extra lanes and proper flyovers must be added later — at far greater eventual cost than had the roads been built properly in the first place.
Heathrow, with its flight paths over London, is a rotten site. But ‘Boris Island’, the Mayor’s proposed airport off Whitstable, 55 miles from central London, is not the solution. It is too far away. The answer lies between these proposals: off the Hoo peninsula in north Kent, where Lord Foster last year produced plans for a four-runway airport combined with a tidal barrage and new Thames crossing. Thanks to the sinking of south-east England, London will soon need an improved tidal barrier in any case. With flight paths over the sea, the airport could function 24 hours a day: a genuine hub airport for northern Europe, linked to Paris and Brussels by existing high-speed trains.
As for Heathrow, it might even be closed and turned into an enterprise zone exempt from normal planning rules, on the grounds that any development would be a huge improvement for local residents compared with what they have now. If David Cameron had the courage to take this third way, he would truly be a mouse that roared.
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