No ifs. No buts. Heathrow must have a third runway. Or must it?

‘No ifs. No buts. Heathrow must have a third runway.’ This was our motion of the evening at last night’s Spectator debate, but when it came to kick-off time, it appeared the audience was there for the taking. The pre-vote count found a majority of nine votes against the motion, but with 21 undecided attendees, everything was still left to play for.

Graham Brady – Chairman of the 1922 committee, and MP for Altringham and Sale West (with Manchester Airport on his doorstep, he added) – opened the debate by speaking for the motion. With more than a nod to David Cameron’s conference speech in Birmingham, Brady argued: ‘We are in a global race today… Sink or swim. Do or decline.’

Two years before he was born, he said, an airport in the Thames Estuary was first proposed. We have had fifty years of dither and delay, and we need a decision now.