Brexit Bulletin: Can Heathrow help Global Britain take off?

Good afternoon.

While I’ve been away for the last few weeks celebrating my deep and special partnership (or, as they might call it in Brussels, an ever closer union), Theresa May’s work on Brexit has continued apace.

The Prime Minister faced down Dominic Grieve and his fellow Remainers, thereby securing the passage of her flagship Withdrawal Bill into law. But she has more to do, like finding a customs plan that her ministers can back after Michael Gove and Liam Fox took her beloved customs partnership "to the abattoir".

European leaders are preparing to gather in Brussels later this week for their latest summit. All signs are that they will be most preoccupied with the revived migration crisis (my colleague Peter Foster has unpicked the tensions between member states here), so they will have limited bandwidth for Brexit.

That hasn’t put Mrs May off, as she is welcoming Donald Tusk back to Downing Street this afternoon where she’ll push Brexit Britain’s case with the European Council chief. Businesspeople are holding out hope for a breakthrough, with the American, Canadian, Indian and Japanese chambers of commerce in Europe jointly urging both sides to speed up progress in the talks. Their intervention may well remind negotiators what is at stake if they keep dragging their feet.

In the meantime, ministers are hoping to settle the decades-long debate over expanding Britain’s airports in time to help their vision of “Global Britain” take off. Chris Grayling has made that clear as MPs prepare to vote on the idea of building a third runway at Heathrow, writing in today’s Telegraph that Parliamentary backing would show “our future lies very much at the heart of the world stage”.

Some of you may be sceptical about that, so might find it interesting to read how Heathrow’s boss explained it to our columnist Juliet Samuel. John Holland-Kaye backed Remain at the referendum, but he is searching “for the opportunities” in life outside of the EU. “It only takes one runway at Heathrow to give us capacity than the French and Germans have at their hub airports,” he pointed out, arguing that the airport is a “real Brexit bonus”.

Will MPs back Heathrow’s expansion or clip its wings? The vote will be around 10pm tonight, so the result will come out late, but we’ll have the latest on our website when it is known.

p.s. Thanks to my colleague James Rothwell for looking after the bulletin in my absence, and thank you to our readers for helping him save Penka the Bulgarian cow from being executed under EU rules.