Britain is no longer a functional country

No. 10 quickly asserted that the meltdown at National Air Traffic Services was a technical issue rather than a cyber attack. This was presumably meant to be reassuring. It is anything but. It speaks, once more, of a Britain with creaking infrastructure, where national paralysis has become a regular occurrence. The highest tax revenues in peacetime history have not created a properly functioning country. 

The breakdown was caused by a single mis-filed flight plan. That such havoc can result from one trivial event does little credit to the organisation entrusted with our airspace. This week’s event may not be a cyber attack, but hostile states and organisations will be taking note. If it is so easy to bring air traffic to a virtual standstill, then we lay ourselves open to the kind of attack that is likely to be an integral part of modern warfare.

Britain is the only country in Europe that has not managed to return its workforce to pre-pandemic levels

The government has been too lax on the issue of cyber security for far too long. While it was brought up in a review of defence policy during Dominic Cummings’s brief time as Boris Johnson’s chief adviser, momentum has been lost. It took several years for the government to accept that incorporating Chinese-made equipment in our broadband networks was a bad idea. This was in spite of the US warning that it would be more circumspect about intelligence sharing with Britain if our internet was vulnerable to attack.

However, this week’s events raise a wider issue about infrastructure investment. The airline industry presents a particular difficulty for the government, since mass air travel is incompatible with net zero commitments.

Its answer to the proposed new runway at Heathrow (which was first mooted in 1946) was initially to prevaricate, handing the matter to a commission led by Sir Howard Davies. Then, when the commission came down in favour of expansion in 2015, the government gave its lukewarm support. Now, it doesn’t look as if the new runway will be built. 

Three years ago the courts ruled that the runway would be in breach of the government’s climate commitments made at the 2015 Paris climate…