Ed Miliband Snubs Reeves Speech Unveiling Heathrow Expansion Plans
Ed Miliband skipped Rachel Reeves’s speech announcing support for a third runway at Heathrow in an apparent snub to plans that he previously threated to resign over. The Telegraph has more.
The Energy Security Secretary, who threatened to resign over expansion of the airport in 2009, was not among the Cabinet Ministers present.
Liz Kendall, the Work and Pensions Secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, the Business Secretary, Steve Reed, the Environment Secretary, and Heidi Alexander, the Transport Secretary, were all in the audience.
A source close to Mr Miliband, asked to explain the absence, said he had “meetings” but did not give specifics.
Mr Miliband also skipped the Prime Minister’s Questions session after Ms Reeves’s speech which was dominated by debate about the growth announcements.
At least 14 Cabinet ministers attended the House of Commons in person as Sir Keir Starmer took questions. Mr Miliband was not among them.
The former Labour leader is not expected to resign over the third runway. “Don’t be ridiculous, no,” Mr Miliband responded to a reporter who posed the question last week.
Yet his absence suggests discomfort over the decision and comes as other prominent Labour figures publicly criticise the move.
Ms Reeves said in her growth speech on Wednesday that a third runway at Heathrow was “badly needed”, could create 100,000 jobs, and that she wanted “proposals to be brought forward by the summer”.
But Sir Sadiq Khan, the London Mayor and a former Labour transport minister, posted his disapproval on social media site X within minutes of the announcement.
Sir Sadiq said: “I remain opposed to a new runway at Heathrow airport because of the severe impact it will have on noise, air pollution and meeting our climate change targets.
“I will scrutinise carefully any new proposals that now come forward from Heathrow, including the impact it will have on people living in the area and the huge knock-on effects for our transport infrastructure.
“Despite the progress that’s been made in the aviation sector to make it more sustainable, I’m simply not convinced that you can have hundreds of thousands of additional flights at Heathrow every year without a hugely damaging impact on our environment.”
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: The third runway at Heathrow will not be ready until 2050, Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary has said, warning that the project would face decades of delays due to planning, protests and technical challenges. Making it completely meaningless for the current Government’s growth agenda.
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Mad Ed is never going to resign on this matter or anything. Loving his power
And lack of morals and principles.
Who nowadays ever resigns on principles? They have none!
A soundbite or some gaslighting is not a principle, its attention grabbing, opportunistic and virtue signaling.
Like the petulant child he is!
Is it me, or have they not released a cost/benefit analysis on the value of the third runway so an informed decision can be made. It sounds like ‘hey, why don’t we build a third runway.?’ ‘Yeah, great idea. Make the announcements will you.?’.
They don’t do cost/benefit analyses any more, it stops them pushing through their agenda’s and supporting their narratives.
Quite so. The most glaring omission is Net Zero.
And the whole “Covid” response debacle of course
It won’t be funded by the government. It will be funded by Heathrow.
So a third runway is back on again at Heathrow. It will not be on it’s own, as there will need to be improved related transport. There have long been various options related to that. Years ago, I was involved in one of them as a consultant. The existing BA terminal 5 underground station already has a spare section that is not in use (more or less boarded over) that could take 2 extra platforms. Then the plan was to bore a new southbound tunnel out to a line parallel to the inner part of the M25, and onto the Windsor line near Staines, along with upgrades at Richmond, Twickenham etc. At that time the old Waterloo International part of Waterloo was redundant, so the idea was to operate between there and Heathrow.
The other feature of terminal 5 was that the current working 2 platform part has a shortish tunnel bore that goes nowhere, but could be extended out to to the north west, and then connected to the GW main line around West Drayton westbound.
Projects of that kind would come off the shelf again, perhaps.
It’s “its” as an adjective.
Should that read…
“It’s.” Its is an adjective.
This is a lovely explanation with a bit of history too:
https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/when-to-use-its-vs-its
I hope that the bitter, devastating infighting will break out in amongst the woke left; I hope they will fraction into small mutually hostile groups until they become completely irrelevant and ridiculous and then they disappear into political oblivion.
That would be fun to watch, but what I expect is some concerted can-kicking down the road to 2029. Much better to let resentment simmer under the surface until the next leadership contest following their defeat at the hands of Reform.
Currently reading the surprisingly entertaining Graham Brady book. One fascinating thing is looking back at things that caused a lot of heat and froth at the time, that though approved by Blair, Brown and then Cameron, never came to pass. This is just one of those things, so do not be fooled. Rachel from accounts gets brownie points for announcing the runway will finally happen (cos it’s needed for jobs 😂😂), knowing there is zero chance of it happening. Millibrain has been told to lie low for a couple of days, while Rachel gets her time in the sun, on the promise that, of course, it’s all lies David, so it won’t affect your mad plans as it’ll never happen.
Let’s hope the third runway takes the trouble to site the temperature sensors well away from jet exhausts, although it’s all a bit hypothetical, given Runway 3 doesn’t have a cat in hell’s chance of ever being built.
Student politicians always were great at spouting.
Ed Miliband can’t threaten to resign.
His real threat is he hasn’t resign.
He doesn’t need to resign, the expansion of Heathrow is clearly never going to happen.
Maybe if Sadiq doubled the ULEZ charge on motorist he’d find that the air pollution coming from ‘planes would be fine. He’s charging every motorist for every journey, and it has made no difference to air pollution, so he’s obviously achieved his objectives. Except perhaps on the now-impassable main artery roads, which are FAR worse for pollution because all the traffic is stationary. But he’s fine, lots of lovely taxes coming in to make up for his cockups on CrossRail, and no-one is dying of lung disease [or at least not the 4000 deaths per annum that were predicted]
And of course that’s before we consider London doesn’t have an air pollution problem, and is one of the cleanest major cities in the world… but we can’t let that little fact get in the way of a nice money making scheme!
The Khant playing his role very nicely.
Kneel and co are really trying to put on a convincing show. Of course such massive proposed spending, for the national good of course, will require inevitable tax rises in order to get this job off the ground 😀 but ultimately we will all be better off. Aye, and pigs might fly. About as convincing a lie as Kneel has managed since…oh July 24.
And yet Terminal 5 was funded privately by the airport and was delivered on time and on budget. But that was before the debt laden sell out to the Spanish so they can plunder us. Cheers you up to read about Sir Francis Drake pinching their treasure and the routing of the Armada.
Indeed – last time I checked Heathrow airport was a private concern, owned by a Spanish group as you said
“Threatened” to resign…
A “threat” is traditionally something negative. Your resignation, Ed, would be a positive boon.
The problem with Miliband is not that he’s a loon, which he of course is, it’s that he’s allowed to be in government by the people above him. He wouldn’t get past Monday lunchtime in the real world.
Time for airlines to put Miliband on a no fly list. It has been reported that he has flown 24000 miles since the election. They can tell him “This is what Net Zero looks like matey.”
More flights, more jets, more chemtrails?