Here we go again. This week, following closely on the row over 42-day detention, another key argument will be fought out on the floor of the Commons. Its implications could hardly be greater. It is about democracy, climate change and daily life - about roads and nuclear power stations, airports and voting. And, yet again, the government finds itself on the wrong side of the argument, with the Tories standing smugly, arms folded, waiting for another Labour political disaster to begin.
It is a funny issue, planning: as an abstract, general matter it is regarded as classic, snore-inducing politics of the dullest kind. But when it is your back garden, your cancer threat or your impossibly busy and dangerous road, then planning becomes something that gets people red-faced and perspiring.
On Wednesday there will be a key vote on the new planning bill, which looks set to inject the passion of a local campaign against a wind farm, or in favour of a bypass, into the rules of planning itself. The 42-day argument was a vital one of principle, but it will affect only a few people. This, by contrast, will affect almost everyone in the country. More than 60 Labour MPs have signalled their anxiety; there is a real chance of a government defeat.
This is not a complicated argument. The government wants to hand over powers to give the planning go-ahead on major projects - such as airport runways, nuclear power stations, motorways and waste dumps - to an unelected commission. It rejected calls for the impact on climate change to be part of the commission's remit. It wants the new system to speed through projects that have been stuck for years in the slow (but democratic) planning system.
There is a case for faster planning. If you are seriously worried about climate change, then you may well believe we need not just a new attitude to energy use, but also wind farms, offshore and onshore; more railways; even nuclear power stations. Without arguing pro- or anti-nuclear, let's accept that there is a case for saying: these things are public goods which few people want on their doorstep, and that therefore the needs of the majority, the country, even future generations, should override the complaints of local protesters. Climate change is an urgent matter. Reshaping Britain's infrastructure and energy industry to deal with it is urgent too.
It is an argument you will hear a lot from ministers and business over the next few days. It has, sadly, been blown to pieces by the government's refusal to accept that its proposed commission should look at the environmental and climate change effect of a new development before letting it go through. That was lost by 15 votes earlier this month. So if this was about equipping Britain for dealing with climate change, why not write that into the bill?
Because, in short, this isn't primarily about climate change at all. It is about business and national growth, and projects that will often run completely counter to environmental needs. It is about Heathrow's proposed third runway, the expansion of regional airports, and more cars on more roads. It is, as the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England put it, a developers' charter.
Why has Gordon Brown gone for this? In part, no doubt, for high motives when it comes to big climate change-related developments. He believes a new generation of nuclear power stations is vital to cut emissions, and he knows that under the current system he won't get it in time. But it is also about low politics and fantasy politics.
The low politics is that this measure is wanted by business, and Brown wants to cause problems for the Tories. To that extent, things are going well for him. There has been an internal Tory row about the Heathrow expansion, with Alan Duncan, the opposition business spokesman, thought to be much more pro-expansion than David Cameron - who last week committed himself to opposing a third Heathrow runway. Duncan sounded uncomfortable talking about the issue yesterday; and, better still for Brown, the business lobby is furious with Cameron. It is being seen as a "test" of the Tory leader's "pro-business" attitudes. When Brown goes to the City and talks about taxes, he gets a raspberry. Now, when he talks about planning and "shallow Conservative opportunism" he will get applause.
Yet what Labour does not seem to have noticed is that outside the lobbying of big business, Cameron's position is bound to be a lot more popular, and Brown sounds incoherent. Are ministers really worried about carbon emissions? If so, why speed up more runways, flights and motorways? Answer: because they care about growth more than they care about climate. That used to be a populist position - wages and jobs first, and let the climate go hang. Cameron thinks the public mood has changed, and the polls suggest he's right.
The fantasy politics comes from the almost mythic status that monetary independence for the Bank of England has assumed in the Brown story. It was his most successful single act, so he wants to repeat it. Planning is about balancing different needs. It isn't about expertise or arcane knowledge. A body told to keep inflation low will get on with it. A body told to get things built, will get things built. Remit is all. But deciding if a wind farm is more useful because of the power it generates than it is damaging because of its impact on a landscape - that's about balancing interests. There is no obvious "right" answer. It is for politics, and argument, not for closed meetings and phoney experts.
So how could this dilemma be resolved? The safeguards and promises about public consultation are meaningless. This bill is meant to rush things through, and that's what its effect would be. If the government turned it into a climate change measure, coinciding with the other green measures it is announcing this week, then that would be a big advance. If it accepted the rebels' other idea, that after the commission, the final say should be with an elected minister, accountable to parliament, then we could have speed and democracy.
The rebels are right and the ministers wrong. A government that said climate change was the biggest challenge and said it wanted to give parliament a bigger say is going in the opposite direction. For what? A thin cheer from City types who will never vote Labour, and a passing split inside the shadow cabinet? I've always found Cameron smug. But the man has plenty to be smug about.
· This correction was published in the Guardian's Corrections and clarifications column, Monday June 30 2008. We should not have called the Campaign to Protect Rural England the Council for the Protection of Rural England; it changed its name in 2003. This has been changed.
