It's not even 20 years ago that labour councils gave the airport away with clauses in there that handed the site on a plate.
The rationale at the time was that the airport needed to be expanded and that the local authorities had neither the money or the expertise to do so. I don't think it was considered at the time that it was being given away, but lets be fair there was
plenty of criticism of how the airport was being run on these pages before Ben took over.