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Appropriately, the railways were not running in Manchester on the day Rishi Sunak cancelled the trains of the future.
A strike left Manchester Piccadilly quiet while up the road, in the conference centre that occupies the Victorian grandeur of the old Manchester Central station, the prime minister tried to ensure high-speed rail will never get there.
His pitch was to trade in the 14-year-old cross-party promise to deliver a new line to the city – part of the “old consensus” he decries – for a series of smaller regional and local links using the £36bn saved on HS2.
The anger and dismay that greeted the news, from industry groups to former prime ministers, was to be expected.
HS2’s history of overspending and mismanagement may make it hard to love but, whether the PM likes it or not, there is political and business consensus north of Birmingham that it was crucial to permanently bridging the north-south productivity divide.
Sunak may have got a better hearing had his new plan, Network North, not been the second rail plan for the north of England in as many years. (You know what they say, you wait ages for a transport blueprint, then two come along.)
When Boris Johnson amputated the eastern leg of HS2 to Leeds in 2021 it was done under the cover of the Integrated Rail Plan for the North and the Midlands, promising £54bn of local and regional transport projects.
If that sounds familiar, some of the detail was too, including a promise to electrify the TransPennine line.
Confusingly, Sunak’s plan also includes projects ruled out two years ago, including the electrification of existing line into Hull.
A little consultation may have helped too.
The 40-page document rushed out by the Department for Transport shortly after the PM’s speech has the whiff of the hotel photocopier about it, and there are reports Network Rail was not consulted at all.
Read more:
HS2: What’s next for transport in the north?
The HS2 revelation could not be more disruptive for…
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