QUENTIN LETTS: This low-wattage Transport Secretary wasted her chance to wreak some political mischief

By QUENTIN LETTS, PARLIAMENTARY SKETCHWRITER Published: 23:00, 16 July 2026 | Updated: 23:02, 16 July 2026 Should you find yourself stuck in a five-hour queue at Malaga airport this summer you will be able to blame two people. The first is Apostolos Tzitzikostas, Europe’s transport commissioner. A moniker to give sign-language interpreters tennis elbow. The other name is easier to say: Heidi Alexander, our Transport Secretary. Not that she will show much interest. Ms Alexander is not high-energy. The eyes are droopy. Sheltering from the noonday sun under some rural oak, she chews the cud and slowly swishes her tail, waiting for the heat to pass. There may be touches of Ma Larkin to our Heidi but she lacks bodacious Ma’s sense of devilment. Delays at Europe’s Schengen area airports have been caused by fiddly new passport checks, the entry-exit system (EES). These are as unpopular with some EU governments as they are with British travellers. France, Italy, Portugal and others are fed up with them. The Greeks have refused to operate them this summer. That must have been a little tricky for Commissioner Tzitzikostas who is, as you may have guessed, of the Greek persuasion. A lively Transport Secretary would be teasing the Europeans for technical incompetence and political disunity. She would have capitalised on the annoyance with EES in Paris, Rome, Lisbon and other European capitals. She would make a speech hailing the good sense of Athens in ignoring its own dingbat transport commissioner. She would grab hold of a bouzouki and a bottle of ouzo and encourage British families to cancel their trips to EES-imposing tourist destinations and to holiday instead in good old Greece. That would do more for Anglo-Hellenic relations than sending back the Elgin Marbles. Imagine the political mischief that could be created! In no time at all, Brussels bureaucrats would feel pressured into scrapping their stupid EES. Low-wattage Ms Alexander, who is more interested in 20mph speed limits and electric cars, has done none of these things. She has just brushed the flies off her rump and chewed another mouthful of dry thistle, no doubt presuming that her pal Andy Burnham will move her to another Whitehall department on Monday. A lively Transport Secretary would be teasing the Europeans for technical incompetence and political disunity but Heidi Alexander is not high-energy, writes Quentin Letts Travellers queue at Malaga Airport in Spain amid border delays arising from the EU's controversial Entry/Exit System (EES) At Transport Questions yesterday she delegated discussion of EES to one of her underlings, Keir Mather. He’s the one who looks about 14 and is almost definitely yet to buy his first razor. Joshua Reynolds (Lib Dem, Maidenhead) asked what discussions Ms Alexander had held on the matter with Cabinet colleagues. Little Keir, by way of a non-answer, said he and Ma Larkin had discussed the EES delays between themselves, and that Ma had met a few Europeans, including the commissioner (ie Comrade Tzitzikostas). Making his voice as deep as possible, young Mather added: ‘We continually discuss what easements or adjustments are necessary to ensure that flows are appropriately managed.’ God help us. ‘Easements’, ‘adjustments’, ‘flows’, ‘appropriately managed’. This is the language of an official caste that couldn’t give a monkey’s. It is the language of a Transport Department that has more in common with its counterparts in Brussels than it does with British holidaymakers who will, in some hell-hole of a Continental airport in the next few weeks, be forced to wait hours in a queue. Their children will whine and their own patience will fray while tooth-sucking immigration officers will boss them about. Sir Roger Gale (Con, Herne Bay & Gammon Sandwich) harrumphed, as only he can, about ‘ridiculous’ EES checks. Baby Mather squeaked: ‘We have provided funding to the juxtaposed controls so that they can prepare for any disruption before it occurs.’ Sir Roger, 82, scowled like a man whose dentist just offered him a suppository. And Ms Alexander? She listened without apparent interest to her colleague’s evasions. Queues at holiday airports? Nah. She couldn’t care less. Let someone else take it up with Spivvy Tzitzikostas in September, when the schools are back and the weather has broken. Andy Burnham's controversial land tax plans could knock 20 per cent off house prices in parts of the South