Boris Johnson has already denied that the work he is carrying out on airport capacity in London is a rival commission to the one set up by the Government and led by Sir Howard Davies. ‘I was a bit flummoxed by that,’ he told LBC this morning. ‘What we’re doing is we are going ahead with our contribution to the Howard Davies commission.’
It doesn’t actually matter whether the Mayor is holding an inquiry called the Johnson Inquiry Into Airports, with its own logo and press launch, or whether he’s actually just calling experts together to develop a detailed submission to the Davies Commission as he suggests he is.
The point is that in nine months’ time, two years before the government’s commission reports, Boris will announce his own solutions to the demand for greater aviation capacity. Submissions to inquiries make as many waves as the inquiries themselves, and he knows that the media will be hungry for something to report from the slow-moving Davies process.
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