I’m being driven mad by Microsoft Outlook

Call me a cynic, but I suspect this week’s headlines about a revival of Heathrow’s third runway plan amount to little more than a political game. Arguments for and against this project have been aired many times over, from a white paper in 2003 to the Davies Commission’s final report (in favour) in 2015. Much to the detriment of London’s status as a global city, the runway has stayed in the long grass – due to marginal-seat politics under the flight path as much as genuine environmental concern – while no satisfactory alternative at Gatwick or Stansted has ever advanced and the advent of the Elizabeth line is Heathrow’s only real improvement in living memory.

But as businesses from WHSmith to Lakeland join the frankly-why-bother party and put themselves up for sale, while entrepreneurs queue to explain why they won’t invest in the UK under the tax regime of Rachel Reeves, she and the Prime Minister desperately need a list of potential growth-boosters. We can almost hear Sir Humphrey saying: ‘Shall I have the third runway file brought up from the basement, Chancellor?’

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And in his cunning way, he probably pointed out that even the fastest planning process (impeded, inevitably, by judicial review) won’t see diggers demolishing the adjacent village of Harmondsworth to clear the Heathrow site within Reeves’s chancellorship, which few believe will last Labour’s full term; so the heaviest flak will fall on her successors. Meanwhile Ed Miliband can righteously declare that the runway will be blocked again if it threatens to break the UK’s ‘carbon budget’ – giving him more clout to intervene in the energy sector and elsewhere while it appears to be going ahead.