If Boris Johnson is in power long enough to see his dream of an estuary airport come true he will be hugely popular with many of his wealthy Richmond and Twickenham supporters for ending Pimms shake from overflying jumbos, but he may well live to regret it from an economic point of view, if the move of the London Boat Show from west London to the Docklands is anything to go by.

Yachtsmen don’t like going the ‘wrong side’ of London to get to their show, in fact it’s mostly only those of their number who live on the east side who do go to Excel. Many yachtsmen still bemoan the loss of Earl’s Court – even all these years after it shifted from there to Custom House.

The same will be true for plane passengers. Already those who travel by air on short haul flights are weighing up the other options. It is quite common these days to hear a conversation like: ‘By the time you’ve travelled to the airport, got there two hours early for security checks,then had to trek in from some God-forsaken location the other end, it wouldn’t have taken much longer to go direct by train and certainly much more pleasant than sweating in a packed airport lounge for hours on end.’

North Kent is a long way from Charing Cross. London Isle of Grain International Airport just does not cut the mustard.