Britain’s infrastructure is run by buffoons – how does a fire at ONE substation shut down Europe’s busiest airport?

IF THE counter-terrorism police do uncover evidence linking the Heathrow fire to Putin’s Russia or any other hostile organisation it will mark the arrival of a grim new era of warfare, where devastating attacks are conducted by sabotage, without the need for bombs or missiles.

But then again who needs bad actors plotting to bring Britain to a halt when we are quite capable of doing it to ourselves?

For Flying Eze's live blog on the Heathrow fire and aftermath click here

Today’s closure of Heathrow has echoes of the chaos in August 2023 when our air traffic control system crashed, leading 1,500 flights to be cancelled.

While some suspected foul play, it turned out it that it had a far more mundane cause: a software glitch, made far worse than it should have been because the engineer responsible for fixing it was trying to work from home.

That is Britain’s creaking infrastructure all over. We have one of the world’s busiest airports relying on a single electricity sub-station.

The chaos would be even greater if Heathrow was expanded with a third runway, as the government wants to do.

How much more resilient our transport system would be if proposals for a new airport in the Thames Estuary had been followed up, giving London two hubs – and providing emergency capacity in the event of a problem at one airport.

Worse than our chronic under-investment in infrastructure, though, is the presence of Ed Miliband in the role of crisis manager.

Why did he tell us this morning that there was “no sign of foul play”; when neither he nor anyone else has a clue at this stage?

Why couldn’t he tell us that we should keep an open mind as counter-terrorism police complete their investigation?

Miliband also caused mystery by telling the world that a ‘back-up generator’ was destroyed in the blaze. National Grid has subsequently confirmed there is no back-up generator at the site, only a back-up transformer.

Heathrow does have its own back-up generators but they are evidently too feeble to allow it to operate much more than emergency lights.

There are certainly terror organisations, as well as climate campaigning groups – not to mention Russia — which would love to wreak this much havoc on Britain.

Their biggest challenge, though, would lie in convincing anyone that it was they – and not the buffoons in charge of Britain’s critical infrastructure – who were responsible.