There wasn’t much to like about the previous iteration of this Labour government but airport expansion was one of them. Rachel Reeves committed early on to expanding City airport, opening the baffling spare runway at Gatwick, expanding Luton and Stansted and building a third runway at Heathrow. It was an aviation extravaganza for London aimed at proving the government’s commitment to growth.
But now all these plans appear to have been grounded, with Andy Burnham dodging questions about the future of Heathrow’s third runway and muttering about the consultation process.
No government can claim to be pro-growth and internationally oriented while deliberately constraining its most vital transport hub. But nobody should be surprised by Andy Burnham’s equivocation on the subject. He is an anti-London Prime Minister.
One of his first acts was the establishment of the absurd ‘Number 10 North’, a pointless political stunt but with the malign implication that he does not believe that the capital should be the centre of power. His central promise of “good growth in every postacode” implies both that there is such a thing as bad growth and that there can be too much of it in one place.
It betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of what growth is and how it works. Burnham believes that it comes from governments and can therefore be picked up by central planners and moved away from where it already exists.
It’s enough to make you miss Rachel Reeves. And that’s saying something.
Here are some of the best pieces from this week’s City AM opinion pages. Enjoy and have a great weekend.
Alys
Sadiq Khan has failed Londoners, I will keep you safe
Reform will put police officers back on our streets, restore effective stop and search, prioritise the prosecution of violent and sexual offenders, expand prison capacity and deport foreign criminals, says Laila Cunningham
B&Q and Screwfix CEO: Healey must cut business rates
At Kingfisher we are delivering investment through our B&Q and Screwfix stores, creating jobs and supporting local communities across the UK. We are investing in new stores, opening over 20 this year alone. We share the government’s concerns about the number of young people not in employment, education or training (NEET), and we have committed to offering work experience placements at B&Q and Screwfix to help tackle this.
While we want to keep doing this, whether we can depends on what the Chancellor decides in this Budget., says Thierry Garnier
Too many of our taxes make no sense
We spend a lot of time talking about tax as a revenue raiser and far less time asking whether the taxes themselves make any economic sense. We rarely think seriously about how the design of the tax system itself can encourage or inhibit growth, says Dan Neidle
Bank-sy?
A public art piece appearing to satirise the process of quantitative easing this week popped up outside the Bank of England. The art piece – featuring a black Canon printer churning out dollars atop a discoball-tiled pedestal, itself sat in a pile of British pounds, all inside of a glass box emblazoned with a spraypainted ‘IN CASE OF EMERGENCY INFLATION BREAK GLASS’ – confounded observers not just for its confused economic literacy, but also for its origin, reports The Capitalist
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