Blog 2023 Malcolm Blair-Robinson

What is taking place on the railways is unforgivable. People who have to travel to work face stress enough in the modern world. They also, if buying rail season tickets, face excessive prices for poor service. Now in several parts of the country the service is disintegrating causing anxiety, suffering and exhaustion to innocent people, whose lifestyle, especially when it comes to family life, is in ruins. The economic cost is yet to be measured but it is bad.

And what is the government doing? Well for a start Downing Street has declared full confidence in the Transport Secretary. That will thrill the crowded platforms and burstingly overloaded trains. And what is the Transport Secretary doing? He has set up an inquiry to discover what went wrong. The answer to that question is simple and can be answered in a trice. He went wrong. And not for the first time. Sooner or later he will have to go.

In point of fact, so will they all.

It is being trailed across the media that the Cabinet, meeting as I write this, will endorse the notion of a third runway at Heathrow. If it does, the idea has to get through parliament, by no means certain, before it will face challenges in the courts.

All this means that even if the government says yes, it will not happen. Because some things may be good or not. Governments may want them or not.  But overall the public opposition and legal complications are such that it is politically impossible to deliver them. The third runway at Heathrow is one of those ideas. In the end it will not happen. Whatever is said today.