Will Boris Island finally be buried?

Speculation is intensifying that the Mayor won’t be so lucky again, despite a last-ditch effort last week to persuade Sir Howard’s Airports Commission that an Estuary airport would support more jobs around Britain than any of the other short-listed options, at Heathrow and Gatwick.

Johnson said the commission faced a “stark choice between planning for the future and depressing short-termism”. He admitted that building a brand-new airport, while also closing Britain’s existing hub, Heathrow, would “be a project of a scale we are no longer accustomed to in this country”, although such huge infrastructure projects have become “commonplace elsewhere”.

“We simply cannot afford to miss out on the opportunities a new airport would give us,” the mayor urged in a final report.

The Mayor produced some bold numbers to back up his plea – an Estuary airport could underpin £92.1bn of national GDP a year, compared to the £59.1bn that could be generated by a three-runway Heathrow and the £22.6bn forecast ascribed by the think tank Oxford Economics to a two-runway Gatwick.

Yet opponents were feeling fairly confident on Friday that the battle for Britain’s skies will shortly become a straight two-horse race between Heathrow and Gatwick. Two options for adding a third runway at Heathrow have been short-listed, along with a second runway at Gatwick.

A slew of reports published on the Airports Commission’s website over the summer did not offer a great deal of promise for the Mayor’s camp.

One study into the environmental impact of an airport in the inner Thames Estuary, drawn up the engineering firm Jacobs, concluded that it would likely result in “large scale adverse effects” on areas designated as international conservation sites. The report, commissioned by Sir Howard, concluded that any scheme in the inner Thames Estuary would have to prove that there are “no feasible alternative solutions for meeting development objectives”. Even if Boris Island did pass that difficult test, the report continued, a large area of “compensation habitat” would have to be created in order to minimise the impact on valuable wildlife species and habitats.

“While it is technically possible to create large-scale habitats, there is, however, a high level of uncertainty in achieving this,” the report said.

A second study, by Leigh Fisher, concluded that while the challenges of a Thames Estuary airport may not be insurmountable “they appear to present a substantial risk that would incur large costs, in the order of billions of pounds, to appropriately manage”.

The Mayor’s office was, at least publicly, remaining hopeful yesterday, insisting that a Thames Estuary airport remained the “only credible option”. But Heathrow Airport reflected the mood of the wider aviation industry when it published an open letter to the Mayor asking for his support if Sir Howard finally maroons Boris Island this week.

The letter was an opening salvo in what is expected to become an increasingly desperate dog-fight between Heathrow and Gatwick to gain the Mayor’s favour. Both airports are likely to be disappointed, however.

The Mayor has long opposed expansion at Heathrow and the airport’s pleas for support are likely to fall on deaf ears. But his view of Gatwick has also been negative. At a press conference in May, Johnson said that expanding Gatwick would be a “sham, a snare, a delusion”, adding: “Gatwick is not the answer…you don’t get the connectivity, you don’t get the hub.”

Gatwick may be more “politically deliverable” than Heathrow, which faces stiff opposition from local residents over noise, but it is highly unlikely Johnson will sign up as an advocate, according to those in the know. In March, at a poorly-attended press conference at Hillingdon Civic Centre, in his hoped-for constituency of Uxbridge, the Mayor insisted he would “fight on” for a new hub airport to the east of London, when asked what he would do if Sir Howard’s decision doesn’t go his way.

Sources close to the Mayor point out that every time the torturous issue of aviation capacity in the South East is reviewed a new site for a hub airport is always in the mix, whether it is in the Thames Estuary, at Stansted or elsewhere.

Whether the Airports Commission adds an Estuary airport to the short-list or not, it’s unlikely Britain will have heard the last of that remote, desolate strip of land on the Hoo Peninsula. Johnson could simply bide his time until the general election next year, after which he could prove a disruptive force in Parliament.

Boris Island may have been branded “bonkers” and “hare-brained” by critics but will it be buried for good? In the airports industry, history proves that ideas, bad or good, have a habit of coming back like boomerangs.

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