Heathrow third runway will never happen, Boris Johnson tells Londoners

Legal and environmental objections, combined with likely election defeat for Labour, will scupper plans, says mayor
Hélène Mulholland
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 22 January 2009 12.03 GMT

Heathrow airport: mayor spoke out against expansion. Photograph: David Levene
The third runway for Heathrow will "never happen" because Labour will lose the next election, Boris Johnson said last night.
The mayor of London was speaking at a public debate organised by City Hall on a platform which included an empty chair with Gordon Brown's name on it.
Johnson had challenged the prime minister last week to defend his decision to allow BAA to apply for the expansion of Heathrow.
Johnson, who has pledged £15,000 to a fund for a legal challenge against the decision, told the debate in Hayes, west London, that the third runway would never be built "because we are working flat out to oppose it".
Asked by a member of the audience how he could make such a promise, Johnson added: "I have absolutely no doubt that the legal, planning, environmental objections will prove that it will be extremely difficult for it to happen in the next 10, 12, 15 years, but even if there were no legal challenge and even if the Labour government were going ahead with this plan, I am afraid that they would find another obstacle at some stage over the next 18 months. They face one obstacle over which Gordon Brown will not be able to jump and that is the electorate and ... that is why I believe it will not happen."
Residents filled the 600-seat Beck theatre to express their fears about the impact of expansion on local communities, ranging from the fate of hundreds of homes set to be demolished in the village of Sipson, to schools being closed and the cost of their homes plummeting as a result of rising noise pollution.
The mayor sympathised with the audience and reminded them that even members of Brown's own cabinet were opposed to the plans.
He said it was time to have a "serious debate" about the possibilities for expansion elsewhere on the aviation map around London.
Opposing Heathrow as a site of expansion, Johnson said: "No mayor of London could ever accept these proposals. No mayor of any comparable city would accept plans of this kind."
Johnson raised eyebrows by breaking the mayor's "people's question time" tradition by failing to invite London assembly members to join him on the stage, even though the cross-party assembly are all opposed to expansion, including the eight-strong Labour assembly group.
The opposition panel also included Zac Goldsmith, the environmentalist who is now the Conservative parliamentary candidate for Richmond Park, and Ray Puddifoot, the Tory council leader of Hillingdon council and a representative of the 2M coalition group of councils opposed to expansion.
Lord Soley, the former Labour MP for Hammersmith who is now campaign director for Future Heathrow, and Frank Wingate, the chief executive of West London Business, spoke in favour of the plan.
The event was chaired by Richard Barnes, Johnson's deputy mayor and Conservative assembly member for Ealing and Hillingdon.
Johnson's team insisted that other guests had been invited to defend the expansion, including BAA and Jim Fitzpatrick, the transport minister, but they had all declined.
Goldsmith described expansion as a "lunatic" decision and condemned the failure to give MPs a vote on the issue. "We should all be enraged at the manner with which we have reached this place," he said. "The story of Heathrow expansion is really a story of political deception."
Soley, however, said that a high-speed rail link, the Conservative party's favoured option, would also force homes to be demolished. He warned that thousands of jobs would be lost if expansion did not go ahead and that Heathrow would eventually close down as it lost out to airport hubs on the continent.
"Look at what would happen to this area if we do not go ahead with this expansion," he said. "You would hear the silence of the economic graveyard."