“There is no more important challenge than the climate emergency. That’s why I voted against Heathrow expansion.” That was Keir Starmer in 2020.
“I will be a responsible chancellor. I will be Britain’s first green chancellor.” That was Rachel Reeves the following year, speaking to the Labour Party conference.
But then I suppose if a week is a long time in politics, as Harold Wilson noted, five years is the dim and distant past. Not that the “climate emergency” has been solved. On the contrary, it has become even more acute, while the pushback against any meaningful mitigation has increased, not least with Trump back in the White House.
Early in the last century, it was announced that the numbers of Tasmanian Tigers, a wolf-like marsupial, had declined catastrophically. The response from the public was to hunt out the last remaining specimens for trophy purposes, so hastening their extinction. The last creature died in a Hobart zoo in 1936.
A fin de siècle feel when it comes to climate change
I detect a similar fin de siècle feel when it comes to climate change. Some, like the big oil companies, cynically fund campaigns to slow down any action that would affect their short-term profits, just as the tobacco companies did before they ran out of road. For others, the problem just seems so overwhelming they have to close their eyes to the evidence.
And what about our Chancellor? She seems to have decided she wants to, or needs to, present a macho image. The Iron Chancellor. We even had Margaret Thatcher invoked recently by the PM, as the government announced a war on red tape.
(Incidentally, every government announces a war on red tape, and if this lot were serious, they would tackle the enormous increase that has resulted from Brexit, but then they are too frightened of Reform and the right-wing press to do anything meaningful about that).
So it’s growth, growth, growth, and anything that gets in the way – environmental consequences, democratic planning processes, the right to protest – has to take a very poor second place.
Labour need to turn the economy around to get re-elected
I suspect the calculation that she and the PM have made is that they need to turn the economy around to get re-elected – “It’s the economy, stupid”, as Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign had it – and need to find options that do not involve very much public expenditure. A third runway at Heathrow would be largely privately funded.
If the Chancellor wants to be seen to be macho, I wish she would just get a bit part in Gladiators and leave the environment alone.
And it is a false notion that we cannot have growth in a way that is positive for the environment. Indeed, Reeves’s 2021 conference speech explicitly linked green and growth as the way forward. Moreover, as Dale Vince, the founder of Ecotricity, pointed out recently, the “old” economy grew by 0.1% last year, whereas the green economy grew by 9%.
Reeves asserts that a third runway will increase GDP by 0.43%, which hardly sounds momentous and is dwarfed by the loss of 4% to GDP which has resulted from Brexit and which the government shows no enthusiasm for correcting. Even that 0.43% is a dodgy figure, coming as it does from a report commissioned by Heathrow itself and using a methodology the Department for Transport has discredited.
The Chancellor argues that a third runway at Heathrow is compatible with meeting the government’s net zero objectives. The question is whether this is a rhetorical smokescreen she knows to be false, or whether incredibly she actually believes it. I am not sure which is worse.
First, she argues that the greater capacity will stop planes having to circle over London. The answer to that problem is to use modern technology to ensure planes arrive over London at the right time to secure a landing slot. A third runway would mean hundreds of thousands of additional flights into Heathrow, which would result in more stacking, rather than less.
Sustainable fuels will barely cut emissions by 2040
Then she asserts that “a lot has changed in aviation” and more sustainable aviation fuels are “changing carbon emissions from flying.” Really? The government’s own projections show so-called sustainable fuels will barely cut emissions by 2040, with any gains wiped out by the increased number of flights.
In any case, there is not sufficient agricultural land to produce anything other than a small quantity of biofuels without severely endangering food security and biodiversity. And we are not even in sight of the Holy Grail of battery planes. Even if an electric plane can be fashioned, it will take just one accident and it will be the Hindenburg all over again in terms of fatal damage to a technology.
Unfortunately, Rachel Reeves appears to be driving transport policy, with acquiescence from Keir Starmer, rather than Heidi Alexander or Ed Miliband. Yet there is a fair chance the latter pair may have the last laugh.
First, under pressure from Miliband, Reeves was forced to concede that consent for a third runway can only be given if the Department for Transport can meet its carbon budget, which it won’t with a third runway.
Moreover, the government has an overall carbon budget to which it is legally bound and, as the Climate Change Committee noted in its 6th budget, there can be no new airport expansion unless there are significant reductions in carbon intensity in other areas of the economy.
We are due to see the 7th carbon budget this month, which begs the question why the announcement on Heathrow was made ahead of that. Was the Chancellor attempting to bounce the committee, or is her interest in climate change so diminished that she was unbothered by, or even unaware of, the pending announcement from them?
The downplaying of climate change does not rest solely with the Chancellor. The government is also expanding airport capacity elsewhere and so driving up emissions. Angela Rayner has over-ruled the local Labour council to roughly double the number of flights at London City airport.
Last October, the Prime Minister welcomed the decision from its owner to expand Stansted Airport, and it seems nearly certain the second emergency runway at Gatwick will be upgraded to a fully operational runway.
Expansion at Luton is also on the cards.
Second, notwithstanding the Chancellor’s determination to truncate the planning process, it is highly unlikely, even if the environmental objectives can be overcome – and this includes air pollution and noise as well as carbon – that a third runway could be operational before 2040 at the earliest. I note that Michael O’Leary, the chief executive of Ryanair, called the Chancellor’s announcement a “dead cat”, and not even one that bounces.
It is at first glance surprising that there has not been more push back from backbench Labour MPs who, as a body, seem much more committed to the environment than the PM, Deputy PM and Chancellor appear to be. The Norwich South MP, Clive Lewis, acidly observed that “there is no growth on a dead planet”, and the London mayor Sadiq Khan has voiced his strong opposition, but these are lone voices.
One theory is that Michael O’Leary’s view is widely held, and that there is no point kicking up a fuss over something that is not going to happen. Is the government really going to move the M25, demolish 750 houses and a primary school?
On the other hand, there has also been little fuss in Labour ranks about the other airport expansions either, or about the 4.6% increase in train fares, the 50% increase in bus fares, or the continued freezing of fuel duty.
Labour MPs mutter that there is a red line when it comes to the two new oil and gas fields in Scotland which were given permission by the last government but then blocked by the Scottish courts who have pushed the decision back to Miliband. Starmer seems inclined to give the green light, and there was a huge spread in the Daily Mail, urging him to do just that.
There was also flexing of muscles by dozens of Labour MPs over the Climate and Nature Bill introduced by the Lib Dem MP Roz Savage. This would have made the UK’s climate and environment targets legally binding. In the end, the government bought off the Bill’s supporters by promising within six months to make a statement on progress towards the targets, consultation on forthcoming environmental legislation, and individual meetings with Miliband.
The Chancellor did refer positively to East-West rail in her recent Heathrow speech, but then, given how far it has progressed, she probably had little alternative.
Yes, we have legislation to change who controls trains and buses and, if well handled, that may help at the margins to offset the fare increase, as Andy Burnham has shown. But I will be surprised if the move from train operating companies to what might be called the OFR (Operator of First Resort) for rail makes much of a difference.
Overall the prevailing direction of travel for the government is towards aviation and private motoring, and away from rail and bus.
Objectively, and it pains me to say this, the present government looks less friendly to public transport than the last lot.
This story was first published in the latest issue of Passenger Transport.
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