Something Nasty in the Air

Among the blessings of the London Haystack's mayoral régime was a persistently illegal standard of air quality; and our lords and masters have evidently decided that, as long as the plebs choose to sit around and poison themselves with unprofitable respiration, one more airport runway here or there will make little difference. Nobody wants any new airports outside the capital, because it would take too long to drive from the Northern Powerhouse to London; which narrows down the choice to a straight fight between expanding Heathrow or expanding Gatwick. It remains to be seen whether the Haystack's new blatherdom at the Ministry for Wogs and Colonies will be enough to prevent his opposing Mad Tessie's favoured option of Heathrow; it seems unlikely, since the interests of his constituents are all that is at stake. Less comfortingly, Zac Goldsmith is making noises about resigning his seat if the Heathrow expansion goes ahead. Assuming Goldsmith isn't performing the sort of flounce favoured by those lesser race-baiters at the Farage Falange, the Conservatives face a cruel dilemma: losing their most blandly affable Muslim-bashing mediocrity, or failing to inflict yet further environmental calamity on the city that elected Sadiq Khan.