
In January 2009, as Gordon Brown’s government argued over whether to build a third runway at Heathrow, the senior civil servant Jeremy Heywood was moved to declare: “Who is this new minister holding up the wheels of government like this?”
That new minister was Ed Miliband – who had become energy and climate secretary three months earlier. Building a new runway, he warned, would make it almost impossible for the government to achieve its pledge to reduce carbon emissions by 80 per cent by 2050. Fierce rows between Miliband and Brown, his political godfather, and fellow cabinet ministers Ed Balls and Peter Mandelson ensued. A compromise was eventually achieved: Miliband accepted a third runway in return for stringent limits on aviation emissions. But the affair left enduring scars.
Fifteen years later, a Labour government is once again poised to back a third runway – and Miliband is climate secretary. Like Brown before her, Rachel Reeves has embraced the project on pro-business grounds. During an appearance at the World Economic Forum in Davos this week, the Chancellor declared: “When we say that growth is the No 1 mission of this government, we mean it, and that means it trumps other things.” Those other things include net zero. Projects, she said, should not be blocked because they “might add something to carbon emissions in 20 years’ time”.
After a fraught start to the year – which saw Keir Starmer forced to confirm she would remain Chancellor – Reeves has gone on the offensive. She has ousted the head of the Competition and Markets Authority, Marcus Bokkerink (who was deemed too anti-growth), replacing him on an interim basis with the former Amazon UK head Doug Gurr (a move that dismayed those in government fearful of a new age of “tech oligarchy”). She has vowed to override environmental obstacles to infrastructure projects, deriding the £100m “bat tunnel” built along the HS2 railway line. And she will use a speech next week to formally confirm her support for expanding Heathrow, Gatwick and Luton airports.
“We said we’d start the new year taking the right decisions to kickstart economic growth – and we are,” a Reeves aide told me.
To some, the UK’s decades-long inability to build a third runway exemplifies its anti-growth mindset (the project was first mooted by Tony Blair’s government in 2003). While Britain has been debating, they say, China has been building. As of today, Guangzhou Baiyun Airport will become the fourth in the country with a four-runway system. Reeves, who visited China earlier this month, wants to prove that Britain is not condemned to managed decline.
But while cheered on by the backbench Labour Growth Group, she faces significant political opposition. Sadiq Khan, who backed a successful legal challenge to the third runway, rejects the project owing to its “negative impact on air quality, noise and London’s ability to reach net zero by 2030” (he has repeatedly warned his party not to take the capital’s voters for granted). His fellow mayor Andy Burnham has condemned it as “a model for an ever-overheating UK economy rather than a more balanced, levelled-up economy”.
Most notably, 15 years after stunning cabinet colleagues with his fervour, Miliband remains opposed. One of his core responsibilities is ensuring the UK does not break its carbon budget – the amount it can afford to emit while meeting its net zero obligations. The view of the Climate Change Committee, which advises the government, is unambiguous: “There should be no net airport expansion” (unless aviation emissions fall faster than others).
“If you want to lose your environmental credentials overnight, this is the way to do it,” a senior Labour MP told me, predicting “blood on the carpet”. Back in 2018, Miliband was one of seven current cabinet members to vote against a third runway (the others being Starmer; the current Environment Secretary Steve Reed; Reeves’ deputy, Darren Jones; Lisa Nandy; Anneliese Dodds; and Hilary Benn). Reeves, however, backed the project.
Inside this Labour government, the dynamic between her and Miliband has become one of the most crucial. When I interviewed the Energy Secretary last September, he spoke of Reeves with almost paternal fondness: “Rachel is somebody that I promoted onto the front bench [in 2011]. She is a genuine mould-breaker: the first female chancellor in 800 years. She cares deeply about addressing the social and economic problems of the country.”
But the pair have clashed politically. It was Reeves who defied Miliband to force a U-turn on Labour’s pledge to invest £28bn a year in green industries. It was Miliband who led cabinet opposition to the winter fuel payment cuts (a policy, some say, that Starmer now regrets). Now, over a third runway, Miliband and Reeves once more find themselves at odds.
For Starmer, the divide encapsulates the two halves of his political career. Miliband was one of the first Labour MPs he befriended and the then leader was “instrumental”, MPs say, in Starmer’s adoption as the parliamentary candidate for Holborn and St Pancras in 2014. Starmer, in turn, restored his north-London neighbour to the shadow cabinet in 2020 and later handed him ownership of one of the party’s five missions: delivering “clean power” by 2030.
But in more recent times, it is Reeves, whom Starmer made shadow chancellor in 2021, who has become the defining political figure in his life. Not since David Cameron and George Osborne have a prime minister and chancellor formed a closer partnership. If recent history is any guide, Starmer will follow Reeves in backing a third runway – but on what conditions?
For now, No 10 insists that any airport expansion must both “contribute to economic growth” and uphold “existing environmental obligations”. But Reeves and Miliband reject such cakeism – they have picked a side. And for Starmer, to govern will be to choose.
This piece first appeared in the Morning Call newsletter; receive it every morning by subscribing on Substack here
[See also: Joe Powell: “Foreign wealth hollows out the community”]