Could this infrastructure bill get Britain growing again?

Every so often, something unexpected happens in the Westminster village which disturbs the usual run of malicious gossip and misleading polling. This happened yesterday, when the whole village began buzzing about, of all things, infrastructure planning. The cause of this was a draft ‘National Priority Infrastructure Bill’, which you can read here, an oven-ready piece of legislation aimed at drastically liberalising infrastructure planning, released by Dr Lawrence Newport of the Looking for Growth campaign.

Newport has form on attracting media attention. A young legal scholar, he sprang to national prominence in 2023 with his campaign to ban the Bully XL, an extremely violent dog that had been intentionally bred to pass through a loophole in the Dangerous Dogs Act. He has since launched a campaign for firmer policing, which he started by parking his bicycle outside Scotland Yard, waiting until it was stolen (he did not need to wait long), and then stirring up public indignation at the indifference with which the police treated the case.