Labour representatives across the region, including Daniel Zeichner, have joined with Councillor Ben Bradnack in condemning Lib Dem – Tory backed plans for moving Marshall Airport. To Bradnack, Lib Dem Cllr ‘Nicola Harrison is naïve to assume a wish to move elsewhere was the significant motive behind Marshall's co-operation with the local authorities in seeking an alternative site for their business.
 
Cllr Harrison asserts correctly that the current airport 'has no expansion potential'. But she then 'presumes' that is why Marshall might want to move, and then jumps from this presumption to the conclusion that they do want to. But she offers no evidence that the current airport does not match Marshall's present and future business needs; nor that Marshall feel any need to move in the foreseeable future.’
 
Bradnack continues, ‘Cllr Harrison is quite right that Cambridge desperately needs more homes. She is also correct that the proposal to develop on the airport was made by the 'democratically elected' local authorities. What she fails to reflect is that this single development proposal was arrived at by a 'stitch-up' between the Lib Dem city council and the Tory county council, who had failed to carry out a proper Sustainability Appraisal of a range of possible alternative growth sites, because there were political advantages to the parties involved in pursuing this particular solution in, and adjoining, the city's Abbey ward - seen then as politically expendable Labour territory.
 
And it is on the political issue that Cllr Harrison is at her most mendacious. “All the political parties” have emphatically not “approved the East Cambridge plan”. Labour city and county councillors, together with Labour parliamentary spokesmen Daniel Zeichner and Tariq Sadiq, have consistently fought the proposals for development of Marshall's airport. Cllr Harrison tries to sneak past this fact, by suggesting that “the Labour government” has “approved” the proposals “on several occasions”. But she has already conceded the mendacity of this assertion by boasting that this is “a locally grown plan produced by democratically elected councillors” ie nothing to do with the Labour government, which trusted the local authorities to deliver the growth which we all agree is necessary, and which has now been landed with a duff decision which is showing distinct signs of unravelling.’

The fight continues.