Despite the formidable array of political and social forces arrayed against the Government when it took its controversial decision to give the green light to a third runway at Heathrow airport, ministers could always cling to the unswerving support of the business community for the project.

But now it seems even that pillar is crumbling. A group of influential business leaders - including the chief executive of Sainsbury, Justin King, and Charles Dunstone of Carphone Warehouse - have called on the Government to reconsider its plan to permit the world's busiest airport to expand.

According to the group's organiser, Ian Cheshire, chief executive of the home improvement group Kingfisher, there are many others in the business world who feel similarly unconvinced of the economic merits of the third runway. The group regards itself as the vanguard of a new wave of resistance.

They have certainly entered the fray with some robust arguments. The aviation lobby asserts that a third runway would enable Heathrow to serve a wider range of destinations, thus opening up Britain more fully to the world. But this alliance points out that the primary effect of building Terminal Five at Heathrow has been to increase the number of flights on already popular routes. There is no reason to believe that the consequences of a new runway would be substantially different.

The group also punctures the argument of the airlines that London will lose business to European competitors if the runway is not built, pointing out that the capital is served not only by Heathrow, but Gatwick and Stansted too. London already has adequate runway capacity. The transport infrastructure the capital, and indeed the country, really needs is high-speed inter-city rail, as the Conservatives have been pointing out.

Read the full article in The Independent.


It's difficult to see how the government's case for the third runway can be eroded - it was never there. It was always a hotch-potch of opportunistic pronouncements built on BAA's unsubstantiated figures and fantasy green jumbos.

It was a discredited policy of a discredited government.