A senior Medway councillor has said Boris Johnson should “shut up and go away” after he made a renewed plea for an island airport.

The mayor claimed London would become “a destination on the end of a branch line” without a new airport in government correspondence, which was published yesterday in the Sunday Times.

Mr Johnson wants a £70 billion, four-runway floating airport in the Thames estuary, dubbed Boris Island.

Medway Council has run a campaign since 2009 with Kent County Council and the RSPB opposing the plan, which it says is “undeliverable, unaffordable and unnecessary”.

Cllr Mike O’Brien (Con) said yesterday: “I just wish he would shut up and go away, frankly. We don’t want the airport there and we have committed ourselves to fighting it.”

The mayor of London wrote: “If we do not act, London will soon be surpassed by cities which in the past could not match its aviation offer. It will consequently face losing out in the competition for international business, tourism and trade.”

A poll commissioned by Medway Council this month, which cost £460, found 76% of 1,000 adults across the UK thought Boris Island was not needed.
Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg added it was a “flight of fancy” on a visit to Kent last month.