Is there any section of Labour support that its Treasury team hasn’t alienated yet? With Rachel Reeves’s personal backing, Heathrow airport has brought forward its ludicrous plans for a third runway (Heathrow submits ‘shovel-ready’ plans for third runway, 1 August).
As a result, we are about to shred the party’s green credentials and mobilise not just the mass environmental movement against us but also a vast swathe of 2 million Londoners hit by increased noise and air pollution.
All Ed Miliband’s good work on meeting climate change targets will be undermined by the carbon generated by this single development. At a cost of £50bn, and with Heathrow airport nearly £20bn in debt, nobody realistically believes that taxpayers won’t eventually be called upon to subsidise the scheme, and travellers forced to pay for it with massively increased landing charges.
With its increased costings, the Heathrow third runway has already gained the reputation of being aviation’s equivalent of HS2.
Approximately 15,000 of my constituents in west London will lose their homes, their schools and their whole communities – but there has not been a single expression of concern from any government minister.
To top it all, some strategic genius has timetabled this nightmare decision to fall just before the next election.
Here’s the tragic irony. The suffering of my constituents, the immense damage to Labour’s environmental strategy and the dire electoral consequences for the party will result from a scheme that very, very few, even in government, have any confidence will even go ahead.
John McDonnell MP
Independent, Hayes and Harlington