A free vote on the Heathrow runway? Don’t be so wet, Prime Minister

Hinkley Point — for all its flaws and the whiffs of suspicion around its Chinese investors — has finally received Downing Street’s blessing. Meanwhile, ministers hold the party line that High Speed 2 will go ahead according to plan, backed by news that the project has already bought £2 billion worth of land; and investors hunt for shares in the construction sector that might benefit from the multi-billion-pound infrastructure spree widely expected in Chancellor Philip Hammond’s autumn statement. But still no decision on a new airport runway for London — the one piece of digger work, short of tunnelling under the Atlantic, that would signal Britain’s raging post-Brexit appetite for global business.

Everything still points to Heathrow, where the two rival expansion schemes — the one proposed by the airport’s owner and the unfunded Heathrow Hub alternative (which Rory Sutherland discusses on p. 69) — have been competing to cut their proposal costs by offering, in effect, lower-quality solutions. As for the impact of-Brexit, Heathrow’s advocates have been pointing out that their airport handles a vastly larger proportion of non-EU exports than its Gatwick rival. They can also now argue that Heathrow’s breach of EU air-quality standards will cease to matter once west Londoners are breathing free British air, however toxic.

But the latest leak from Downing Street — in a document carried by a civil servant on the Underground and filmed by a fellow passenger — suggests Theresa May is considering giving MPs a free vote on the issue in order to appease Boris Johnson (who last week said Heathrow expansion should be ‘consigned to the dustbin’) and duck a potential cabinet split. Such pusillanimity would damage the ‘Iron Lady II’ image the Prime Minister has cultivated, without guaranteeing the result her advisers prefer. She should cut the crap and take her lead from London mayor Sadiq Khan, who said this week: ‘No more delays… Gatwick’s ready to go.