Last week I made fun of the lengths to which Boris Johnson might go to avoid the Heathrow airport expansion vote. I wrote he would need to find somewhere about 10 hours away by air to ensure there was no chance of being home by 10pm.

It must be somewhere the British media had a limited presence so there would be no chance of any embarrassing questions or photo opportunities. Somewhere a bit like North Korea. Not for the first time with this government, the satire turned out to be more or less an accurate report of what was to happen.

Johnson criticised over decision to miss crunch Heathrow vote Read more

The foreign secretary never actually made it to his first choice awayday city break of Pyongyang. Kim Jong-un had a prior engagement at a fast food restaurant that couldn’t be cancelled. Sorry and all that. Try not to leave it so late next time. Luckily the Afghans were rather more obliging. They couldn’t put up their foreign minister, who was desperate to watch the Saudi Arabia v Egypt World Cup game, but the deputy foreign minister was free. And the president had a spare five minutes or so if that helped.

But what was it that the British foreign secretary wanted from them exactly? “Nothing,” said Boris. “Are you sure,” President Ashraf Ghani had enquired. Couldn’t they at least talk possible business and trade links? Afghanistan and the UK could be the new global superpowers post Brexit. “Fuck business,” Boris mumbled. He just wanted to use up some free air miles and hang out in Kabul for an hour or so en route to flying straight back to the UK.

At the last general election, Boris had promised his constituents he would be the first to lie down in front of the bulldozers if a third runway at Heathrow was given the go ahead. Some might have interpreted this as a commitment to resign as foreign secretary and vote against the government on the issue.

Boris had been quick to disabuse everyone of this in a newspaper article. He had never made a promise that he had knowingly kept and he wasn’t going to break the habit of a lifetime. His reputation depended on him not keeping his word. His integrity was his mendacity. So he was now going to waste a day flying 7,000 miles to a country he didn’t need to visit just to avoid voting on more planes flying in and out of Heathrow.

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All of which should have been a welcome distraction for Chris Grayling. A chance to push through some controversial legislation when the focus was elsewhere. There was just one problem with this. The transport secretary himself. Even when the final vote is never in doubt, he remains a liability to both himself and all those around him. Failing Grayling is close to breaking point in a state of near catatonic meltdown. The only sign of intelligent life is his nervous tic – the pulsing spasm in his neck – that gives him the appearance of the Herbert Lom character in the Pink Panther films.

Earlier in the morning, Grayling had told the Today programme on Radio 4 that he was not in control of the railways. Something that would have been blindingly obvious to anyone who has tried to make a train journey in recent weeks. Now he was inadvertently explaining to the Commons why he wasn’t in control of Britain’s aviation policy either.

Failing Grayling gave no sign of really understanding what it was he was reading out. Even though he had previously thought Heathrow was a rubbish idea, he was now persuaded it was a good one. If we didn’t pollute the environment then some other country would, so we might as well get in there first. But no one should worry unduly because, even if it did go ahead, there was no guarantee the runway would ever be used. It was about as convincing as that.

“I’m on your side,” said a rather desperate Lucy Powell from the opposition benches. “But you’re making all the wrong arguments.” She appeared to be the only person in the chamber who expected him to make the right ones.

Rescue for Grayling came in the form of Greg Hands, the former minister with enough self-worth and the sense of decency to remain true to his election promises and resign from his post to vote against the government whip. Hands didn’t mince his words. This was a matter of honour. Of doing the right thing. And he urged colleagues to follow his example. It was just a shame that the person to whom his remarks were primarily addressed was 36,000 feet in the air on his way back from Kabul.