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In my ward of Isleworth in West London, an otherwise green, tranquil and beautiful old riverside town, Heathrow’s planes are a near-constant blight.
Here, the sight of aeroplanes scraping rooftops with a deafening roar is as common as the kingfisher and the heron. Residents in Isleworth have long opposed a third runway and for a long time, the prospect appeared permanently grounded.
Now Heathrow expansion is back on the agenda, owing to Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ mission to restore growth and kickstart the British economy after 14 years of economic decline under the Conservatives.
Overall, the mission is the right one, and Reeves might even be commended for her willingness to make bold moves to secure it, and to make the kind of pronouncements that signal she’s serious, but on Heathrow, the Chancellor is looking in the wrong direction. The real bold move, the real elephant in the room when it comes to growth, is Britain’s relationship with the EU.
The Case Against Heathrow Expansion
The environmental case against Heathrow expansion is self-evident. Rightly, Energy Secretary Ed Miliband has said the third runway will only go ahead if it is within climate targets, but there is widespread scepticism from Whitehall to City Hall that it’s possible for the Government to meet its climate commitments while permitting around 2,000 additional flights a day at Britain’s biggest airport.
Of more immediate concern to residents living so close to Heathrow, however, is air pollution. Exposure to ultrafine particles (UFPs), which are emitted by planes during take-off and landing, may be associated with 280,000 cases of high blood pressure, 330,000 cases of diabetes, and 18,000 cases of dementia in Europe, according to research last year from the Transport & Environment group.
The same study estimated Heathrow, even with two runways, to be among the worst offenders in Europe for exposing residents to UFPs.
And then there’s the noise, with the Airports Commission saying a new runway would expose an additional 12,000 to 28,000 people to 70 decibels or more. For the people of West London, this is far more than a mere inconvenience.
Studies have shown that living close to airports with high levels of aircraft noise, which can impact sleep and act as a stressor on the body, puts people at greater risk of poor heart health.
All of this is a high price to pay. And for what? A third runway at Heathrow, which even if it passes its colossal environmental hurdles, is a decade off at best. It is not favoured by the public — with a YouGov survey for Climate Outreach and Possible finding the majority opposed to Heathrow expansion. And Reeves estimates it will boost potential GDP growth by a mere 0.4% by 2050.
Achieving growth and raising living standards was always existential for this Government. Even more so with Reform overtaking Labour in the polls. As such, it is willing to rip up old orthodoxies, even when it is unpopular to do so, calculating that if it succeeds, if it can inspire economic confidence, if Labour can transform the fortunes of the country and genuinely make people better off, then the ends will justify the means.
But there is one orthodox stone it has so far been too afraid to turn.
The case for Europe
A study this week from Frontier Economics commissioned by Best for Britain shows deep alignment with the EU on goods and services could boost GDP by up to 2.2% — recovering around half of what was lost through Brexit. Go further and… well. But dare we say it?
It’s clear that leaving the European Union has been a disaster for the British economy. And yet, for a Prime Minister who once campaigned ardently to Remain and whose premiership and legacy rests more than anything else on achieving growth, reversing the harms of Brexit remains the obvious answer no one is willing to talk about.
Whilst the Government is committed to resetting relations with the EU, it has ruled out rejoining the customs union or the single market, let alone the EU itself, even though to do so would be transformational for its central growth mission.
The reasons are understandable. No doubt with Reform leading in the polls, Labour is terrified of losing votes to Nigel Farage. But need it be? Only 9% of 2024 Labour voters are considering voting Reform.
Reform may be surging, but it is primarily due to the 33% of 2024 Conservative voters who are considering switching. Labour is never going to peel away votes from Reform, or from those 33% of Conservatives for whom the most right-wing Conservative Government in living memory was too moderate, by making the best fist of Brexit.
It needs to look in the opposite direction: 55% of British people now say it was wrong for the UK to leave the EU, versus only 30% who say it was right. This rises to 80% of 2024 Labour voters and 80% of 2024 Lib Dem voters.
That is to say, if Labour were to pursue much closer ties with the EU