The case for privatising Manchester airport

It is 12 years since Tony Blair did battle with the socialist dinosaurs and forced them to abandon their commitment to nationalisation with his celebrated ‘Clause 4 moment’ — the very birth of New Labour.

It is 12 years since Tony Blair did battle with the socialist dinosaurs and forced them to abandon their commitment to nationalisation with his celebrated ‘Clause 4 moment’ — the very birth of New Labour. Now that Blair has been and gone, you would struggle to find a serious politician in any party who would advocate state ownership of any industry as a 21st-century model. Indeed, the idea of the state running our utilities, airlines or railways now seems archaic and even faintly ridiculous. Under both Conservative and Labour governments we have transferred everything from telecoms to road haulage and defence research to the private sector. Yet next door to my Greater Manchester constituency there is a thriving modern plc worth

£3 billion which remains in the public sector without anyone batting an eyelid.

Manchester airport is a magnificent gateway to this resurgent city and a powerful motor for the economy of the whole northwest of England. While Heathrow is increasingly vilified as a ‘third world’ travel experience, we Mancunians are actually rather proud of our airport. It is at the forefront of efforts to achieve environmentally sustainable growth in aviation and has plans to make its entire ground operation ‘carbon neutral’ by 2015. Passengers consistently vote Manchester one of the world’s favourite airports and it is the third busiest in the country after Heathrow and Gatwick. This is a modern, profitable business — but its anachronistic ownership structure stands as a monument to old-fashioned municipal socialism.

Shares in Manchester Airport Group (MAG) are owned by the City of Manchester (55 per cent) and by the other nine Greater Manchester boroughs (45 per cent).