Boris makes last-ditch bid for estuary airport

The Isle of Grain proposal would mean more than five times as many jobs than if Gatwick expanded and a third more than Heathrow.

Releasing the figures in a last-ditch bid to persuade the Airports Commission to support his proposal, Johnson said: “A new hub airport, properly planned, has the potential to reshape the economic geography of London and the whole of the southeast for decades to come.

“It would be a project of a scale we are no longer accustomed to in this country, though it has become commonplace elsewhere.

“We simply cannot afford to miss out on the opportunities a new airport would give us.”

The commission is due to make a decision on the proposal next month. Opponents have described the proposal as “environmental vandalism”.

But Johnson said the options came down to “planning for the future” or “depressing short-termism”.

Rodney Chambers, leader of Medway Council, said the location was “financially, geographically and environmentally wrong”.

“It will waste tens of billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money for a project which is on the wrong side of London for the majority of passengers,” he told the BBC.

Meanwhile, pro-Heathrow expansion campaigners reacted with alarm to the news that Johnson had added his name to a list of prospective Conservative candidates for the local Uxbridge and South Ruislip constituency at the next general election.