Of course this is political. The decision to close UK airspace will have been taken at the highest level of government. NATS has been presented as the front for the imposition of these restrictions and it, and the Met Office (they of the 'barbecue summer' computer prediction models) can conveniently take the justified ire of the public and the airline industry.
The real decision makers ie government will happily hide behind NATS and Met office to avoid the embarassment that the initial decision to close airspace was taken without an iota (or micron) of empirical data.
