Airport expansion in the South East appears to be fading !
Hardly surprising when you consider there's an election coming up in May.
Plenty of Tory seats within "earshot" of LHR / LGW, so lots for the Conservatives to lose - and Labour are hardly likely to stick their head above the parapet and promise extra runways willy-nilly as they will need all the luck they can muster to win outright.
That's the problem with democracy - elections come around every 5 years and infrastructure takes more than 5 years from proposal, through planning to fruition - so in the end we wind up with the usual British mess where too little is built too late and costs too much, leading for even more planning and political buck passing - and yes, yet more cost to still not get it right.
Look at China, no democracy, government not answerable to the NIMBYs, and economy (allegedly) growing apace, along with infrastructure. Question is, would we rather live in China or the UK?