The Wardman Wire

Stage One complete: A success
The Tories are often, and unfairly sometimes, accused of having no policies. While they are thin on set in stone policies in many areas, it has often been very deliberate. The first stage in the Cameron plan was to “decontaminate” the brand – which he has been pretty successful at doing. Why lay all your cards on the table until election? We have seen how the government are quick to pick up the good ideas and claim them for themselves after all.

Pressure is on for a few policies
However, the pressure will start to grow this week for more policy commitments from the Tories. One area that they have been lacking in is transport. They have some behind the scenes ideas from the Conservative Transport Group, but as of yet there is very little in the way of policy. This morning Theresa Villiers has outlined two major policy commitments for the Tories on Heathrow expansion and high speed rail.

High speed rail
The proposal for a £20bn high speed rail link is a fantastic idea and something Britain desperately needs. It will open the North up to not just the South East, but the whole of Europe. The West Coast mainline is desperately in need of more capacity and a better service. However this proposal is not cheap.

Heathrow expansion is necessary, despite its evils
To pay for it, Villiers has suggested scrapping the idea of a third runway at Heathrow. This is a very dangerous strategy and I do not believe is in the best interests of British business. Heathrow is an international hub, it brings in billions of pounds worth of business a year and is desperately in need of further runaway capacity or it will not be able to cope. This would damage London and the UK’s economy. No doubt about it.

Trains alone are not the answer
Villiers claims that the extra capacity could be found by encouraging train usage. But the people who use internal flights in the South east tend to fly from Luton, City or Stansted airports, not Heathrow. Besides, Heathrow needs to increase capacity to the outside world far in excess of what the train system will be able to take. The problem here is, yes Heathrow is not ideal, but it is what we have and the Tories are not providing a good enough alternative to justify opposing Heathrow expansion.

Boris’s idea
Having said that, Boris Johnson is, of course, offering one: The Thames estuary airport. A great idea in theory and if we could start again perhaps it would make perfect sense. But we can’t. We are now committed to spending multi billions of pounds on Crossrail, linking Heathrow to the city. We are in the process of building the multi-billion pound Olympics. We have just built the multi billion pound fifth terminal. The government is having to shell out ever more billions on the London Underground upgrade. Where does he think the money is going to come from in these credit crunch times and what would we do with Crossrail and terminal five now except leave them as white elephants?

This policy could well be very damaging
The Tories are claiming that high speed rail is an alternative to Heathrow expansion. It is not. The damage caused by not expanding Heathrow and coming up with a viable alternative will have very damaging effects on British business and some other city in Europe will clean up.

If it is a choice between the two, high speed rail or Heathrow - and I do not I think is as black and white as that - Heathrow has got to be the priority.