Rishi Sunak on Wednesday addressed the Tory party conference for the first time as Prime Minister — and, in the opinion of some people on his own side let alone his enemies — blew it.
He is a man who is widely admired for his grasp of detail, especially when it comes to finance but there are doubts about whether he really understands “politics”.
He used Manchester of all places, where the Tory party conference is being held — and this could be the last one before the general election next year — to announce that the high-speed rail link, HS2, from Birmingham to Manchester is being scrapped.
It will only run from Euston in London to Birmingham.
This was meant to be Britain’s biggest infrastructure project connecting the underdeveloped north of England with the much more prosperous south. In fact, encouraged by the prospect of HS2 going from London all the way to Manchester, many firms in India were considering investing in the north. But now, in common with investors from other parts of the world, they may think again.
Rishi said “every penny” of the £36 billion saved by scrapping the Birmingham-Manchester high-speed rail link will be invested in the north. But politically this may not cut it. His enemies and even people on his own side understand the “symbolic” importance of HS2 and that cancelling it will be depicted as a blow to economic prospects in the North.
Rishi justified his decision by telling the conference: “HS2 is the ultimate example of the old consensus. The result is a project whose costs have more than doubled, which has been repeatedly delayed and it is not scheduled to reach Manchester for almost two decades.
“And so, I am ending this long-running saga. I am cancelling the rest of the HS2 project. And in its place, we will reinvest every single penny — £36 billion — in hundreds of new transport projects in the North and the Midlands, and across the country.”
Boris has already said cancelling the Birmingham-Manchester leg of HS2 was “utter madness”. Many fear Rishi committed hara-kiri on Wednesday. The Labour mayor of Manchester, Andy Burnham, said there was “frustration and anger” over the decision. “It always seems that people here where I live and where I kind of represent can be treated as second-class citizens when it comes to transport.”
Henri Murison, from the business group Northern Powerhouse Partnership, said the decision was a “national tragedy — economically at least”.
And Mick Lynch, general secretary of the RMT union said the “incompetence of successive Tory governments has now cost the taxpayer billions and led to this disastrous decision”. The rail unions staged a train strike to coincide with Rishi’s speech.
Rishi made other announcements — raising the age at which people can buy cigarettes to create a “smoke-free generation”, and also reform of the school A-level exams.
Unusually, he was introduced on stage by his own wife, Akshata Murty, who gently teased her husband over his love of romantic films — “the cheesier the better”.
She added: “He is fun, he is thoughtful, he is compassionate and he has an incredible zest for life.” Rishi responded warmly: “Thank you, Akshata, for that introduction, and thank you for always being there for me. My wife: truly the best long-term decision for a brighter future, I ever made.”
