Heathrow - A Good Decision Made Badly

The proposed third way for Heathrow has been thrown out by the courts.  That is a good decision, but having unelected judges strike down laws made by elected politicians is bad.  Bad political decisions should be overturned politically not by the courts, who will be a first line of defence of the ruling class should a Workers Government, or even a radical social-democratic government begin to make laws that challenge the power of capital.

The decision against the third runway is good, because far too much economic power and influence already resides in London.  London is massively subsidised by the rest of the country in meeting its needs for labour, although the revenues created in London, and appropriated by the capitalist state, in turn subsidise the activities of the state, including the provision of welfare, in the rest of the country.  But, vast amounts of that welfare are also expended wastefully in London itself.  The government spends an astonishing £22 billion a year on Housing Benefit.  The average per person is around £5,000, with 4.6 million recipients, but the majority of those recipients are in London, and the average payment per recipient in London, is much higher than in the rest of the country, because of the exorbitant costs of housing in London.  The government has to make these payments, because otherwise, the cost of living for millions of workers in London would be just too high, and businesses in London would not be able to recruit the workers they require without paying far higher wages than they do now.  That would be a big incentive for those firms to relocate their activities elsewhere, including elsewhere in Britain, though with Brexit they are increasingly likely to relocate to Dublin or other centres in Europe. 

But, Housing Benefit, which pours these billions of pounds into the pockets of landlords that could otherwise have been spent on capital investment, is only one of the subsidies given to London employers.  Commuters to London complain about the cost of rail fares, but the fact is that those fares are themselves massively subsidised by the taxpayer, i.e. by all of the other workers in the rest of the country who do not commute to London, or even use the trains.  The reason again that the government has to subsidise these rail fares is, because, as living costs in London have soared uncontrollably, businesses could only recruit the labour they required, at wages they were prepared to pay, by drawing in workers from further and further away from London, where living costs are lower.  The subsidies given to the private rail companies are today far greater than any support the state gave to British Rail.  But, without the huge subsidies to rail fares, commuters to London would need much higher wages to cover their cost of working in London, and that would mean that employers in London would again be incentivised to relocate their business.  The HS2 decision is just the latest huge subsidy being given to London employers, to enable them to draw in cheaper Labour from the rest of the country, which again will act to the detriment of the economy outside London.

If the government really were committed to rebalancing the economy in Britain it would scrap all of these subsidies that go to employers in London, so that economic development could be encouraged elsewhere.  If all of that £22 billion handed to landlords as Housing Benefit were instead used to invest in infrastructure in the rest of the country, it could go to producing well paid employment for workers.  In the process, providing well paid employment would be the best way of removing the need to spend billions on welfare payments.  Its all well and good saying that London is the hub that draws in all of this revenue, which is then used to finance welfare elsewhere in the country, but if the subsidies to employment in London were not there, so that the true cost of labour in London had to be borne by capital, it would encourage employment to shift to other parts of Britain, so that the requirement for welfare was reduced to begin with.  Workers in the rest of Britain don't want a life of welfare dependency subsidised by rich Londoners, we want proper, well-paying, permanent and secure jobs!

If you want to rebalance the UK economy, though good luck with that in the context of Brexit, and the governments intention to undermine workers rights, and to introduce further distortions via the introduction of freeports and so on, then the decision not to go ahead with a third runway at Heathrow is a necessary start.  Instead we need a huge expansion of airports outside London, so that the rest of the country can have a direct and quick connection to the rest of the world, without it all being channelled through London.

Early this morning, I spent three hours taking my son to Manchester Airport, because he's flying off to the Canaries, giving appropriate disregard to the ridiculous moral panic going on over coronavirus.  Normally, I'd take him to Crewe Station to go by train to Manchester, but in the middle of the night, there are no trains.  But, its ridiculous to have to spend three hours to get to Manchester Airport and back.  That's longer than the flight to the Canaries.  Indeed, its ridiculous to have to drive from Stoke to Crewe and back to be able to get a train, so as then to get a flight.

But, many flights still are only practical from London, which at best means a two hour train journey prior to the flight.  In the past, when we used to go to the Canaries every Christmas on last minute Ceefax deals, I've driven as far as Newcastle on Tyne, and even Glasgow to be able to get the available package.  Every major conurbation like North Staffordshire should have its own regional airport, so that the economies of these areas can be directly linked to the world outside.  That is a fundamental requirement for balanced regional economic development.

Environmentalists will undoubtedly complain, because restricting air travel has become a latest hobby horse, but the benefits for balanced and increased economic growth, and for reducing all of the waste of energy, time, as well as pollution caused by journeys to more distant airports, more than offset it.  In any case, the answer to pollution caused by air travel is not to ban air travel, but to impose greater restrictions on aircraft makers, in order to encourage them to produce cleaner, and more efficient engines and aircraft, including a more rapid development of electrically power craft.