Ladies and gentlemen, the captain has illuminated the “fasten seat belts” sign. Not only have Sir Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves run into severe turbulence over Heathrow, the flight deck deliberately steered the Labour plane into storm clouds. That’s an interesting choice for a government that was already buffeted by serious unpopularity and it’s a choice that a lot of their own party are struggling to explain to themselves. Anger about the chancellor’s new commitment to back the expansion of the London airport and others is mingled with bewilderment. A lot of Labour people are scratching their heads trying to work out why she wants to burn political capital on a hugely contentious project that couldn’t possibly be complete until long after she’s done at the Treasury and Sir Keir is gone from Number 10.

It was her choice and his. She didn’t have to make airport expansion the centrepiece of her keynote speech about growth. The prime minister, if his title means anything, could have stopped his chancellor had he wanted to. One consequence of the fury about the subject is that it diverts attention from her more welcome thoughts about how to boost Britain’s growth-starved economy.

No one is talking much about building new reservoirs or other features of her growth plan because airport expansion has blotted out everything else. Hostile fire was instant, will be continuous for years ahead and comes from several camps with which Labour has wanted to be friendly. For the incandescent environmentalists, Heathrow is a litmus test of whether or not the government is authentically committed to addressing the climate crisis. Backing expansion is a total fail. They kind of wanted to believe Ms Reeves back in the day when she told the Labour conference that she would be as proud to be “Britain’s first green chancellor” as she would to be its first female one. I would advise her against repeating that line, and especially not in front of green audiences, unless she enjoys being scorned.

Another group expressing disappointment are those who wanted to trust the........

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