Face it: we no longer need a third runway

For sure, the Transport Secretary, Geoff Hoon, will repeat the Government's case for a third runway in the Commons tomorrow: principally, that it will cost the economy, and the passenger, if we do not build one.

But even if Captain Hoon were a more respected pilot, he is flying into a headwind. It started, most significantly, with the conversion of the Tories, who have come out firmly against a larger Heathrow. Since no building can start before the next election, and since the Tories still look likely to be in power after it, the third runway is probably doomed.

The question for London's Labour MPs is whether they want to be doomed, too. For the first time, there is a clear choice between the parties on this issue, with the potential to move many votes.

Over the past 10 days, 50 Labour backbenchers have demanded a rethink. At least three Cabinet ministers are also reportedly against. Last week, The Economist became the latest unexpected convert to the cause.

The Government is not just losing the politics. It has also lost the argument. It was never clear that Heathrow held back the economy. It may have been full but London has four other airports, most with spare capacity; we have never had more direct air links to the world.

If a city's success depended on its airports, Frankfurt would already be the financial capital of Europe. But it has declined relative to London, even as its airport has improved.

And now, the slowdown has kindly carved us some runway space. Heathrow's flights are already two per cent lower than last year. With dozens more airlines set to fail, and BA, Heathrow's main user, slashing schedules, that trend can only accelerate.

The vast majority of Heathrow's traffic is not, in fact, business, but leisure (mainly by Brits - which takes money out of the UK, rather than putting it in) and transfers. That is what has filled the runways - but these markets are now crumbling. And even when the economy recovers, binge flying may not.

Emission trading will push up fares. Oil prices will probably settle at a higher level. Passengers are increasingly carbon-conscious, airport security increasingly oppressive, and there are only so many holidays you can take. We may, in other words, already have passed the peak of demand for air travel and should not build a monument to it.

True, one claim by Heathrow's opponents is also specious: that high-speed trains can replace many flights. Rail has market dominance to Paris, Brussels, Leeds and Manchester already. For virtually no other destinations is it a realistic alternative.

Nor does a replacement Heathrow in the Thames Estuary convince. Costs will be vast; locals will holler; fog will ground flights; the estuary's millions of birds will get sucked into the engines.

The antis' core claim, however, is surely now unanswerable: that the devastating environmental cost of Heathrow's expansion outweighs any economic benefit.

This turning-point could be big. It could come to be seen as the moment we moved away from the growth-at-all-costs, bigger/faster/more imperatives that have governed our politics for two generations, and towards a more genuinely sustainable way of life.

Yet perhaps the immediate pivot was something rather smaller: the chaos, this spring, at Terminal Five. Trumpeted as rescuing Heathrow's image, and signalling its future as an expanding hub, it instead became the perfect demonstration of why this airport is not the future of anything.

Obama's real advantage

WHILE Obama probably won't be a successful president of the world, he may well succeed — because he is the first President in 45 years to come directly from Congress. Given America's separation of powers, only a President who can work Congress gets his programme through. The White House usually goes to state governors — who tend, like Clinton and Carter, to get mauled. Lyndon Johnson, the last to go straight from Capitol Hill to the White House (initially as vice-president), was among the most effective presidents in modern history.

Obama, a congressional rookie, is no LBJ. But in early signs of Obama's difference, his transition team is based in Washington, not Chicago; and his chief of staff too is currently a serving member of Congress. There is also a big Democratic majority in both houses. Those are good auguries for a presidency that can change America — and thus, indirectly, the rest of the planet.