So if R3 doesn't get built, the money will be spent in the regions - don't make me laugh
The unrelenting focus of public infrastructure funding for transport projects near-exclusively in London and the SE is becoming increasingly untenable. The regional public and business community is gradually taking note and calling politicians to account. LHR R3 will require upto £20Bn in public funding for support works, a colossal figure which could transform Northern infrastructure on its own. Your defeatist attitude is understandable given the record of the past fifty years, but perhaps you'd do better to lobby for a fair deal for the NE instead.
To give a bit of context: £20Bn would fund the Manchester Airport TP more than 20x over (and that £1Bn is privately-funded anyway!). In the BREXIT debate we are told that GB pays in to the EU a net £10.5Bn per year which could be better spent elsewhere. Well, we'd need around 21 months worth of that just to fund the LHR support works. And that is after HAL pays for the runway itself (£18.5Bn+). That is how enormous these figures are. And the return for the North from all this is pitiful. Mr Holland-Kaye's charm offensive doesn't change that.