HS2 snub is another Tory nail in the North’s sorry sinking coffin
Excitement is reaching fever pitch here in the North as we gather to welcome our liberators.
Brass bands will play, bunting will fly and thanks will be offered for their unflinching commitment over the past 13 years to Levelling Up policies that have flooded our dark, satanic mills with light and hope. Well that’s how it might have been as Tories gather today in Manchester for their conference, but seeing as they’ve done as much for the North as King Herod did for male Judean babies, all they’ll draw is dismissive sneers.
Especially now that HS2, the grand infrastructure project designed to turbo-charge the northern economy, looks to have been downgraded to a fast London commute for Brummies. Its dumping into the landfill of history on cost grounds, while London’s Elizabeth and Jubilee lines were waved through billions over budget, is a potent symbol of the contempt the North has to endure whenever Tories are in power. An emblem of the empty promises which has turned the North/South divide into a chasm.
The Social Mobility Foundation released a report this week showing that 90% of 16 to 18-year-olds in the North feel that they need to move south to find decent work opportunities. Which, more than 40 years after Thatcher wielded her vindictive axe, is as economically illiterate as it is heartbreaking.
But back to HS2 and a cautionary tale of how the citizens of our great industrial cities have been reduced to second-class status. Exactly 193years ago, the world’s first inter-city railway, between Liverpool and Manchester, was opened. I had to use that line last week to get a flight to Austria.
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I was awoken at 6.30am by a mate who had checked the timetables to be told our train to Manchester Airport had been cancelled, along with every other “fast” train that morning so we had to go an hour earlier on a slow train to make the flight. After a grinding eternity it chugged to a halt outside Old Trafford stadium for 40minutes because another train “couldn’t open its doors” at Deansgate. The nonplussed expressions from commuters who were late again for work said it all.
We were then stuck in a queue, missed two connections to the airport at Oxford Road and were told if we walked briskly to Piccadilly we might catch a train to make the flight. We jogged in the rain for 10 minutes and just made the connection. A single ticket on that depressing journey to dishevelment cost £20. Meanwhile, in Austria the trains ran like clockwork and were as cheap as the freshly cooked chips they served in their spacious buffets.
How has the nation which laid the world’s first rail tracks come to accept a Third World train system? How has the region that was the backbone of the industrial revolution sunk from being one of the world’s richest to one of Europe’s poorest? No one up here is stupid enough to lay the entire blame for Britain’s decaying infrastructure and regional wealth gap on Sunak’s government. It’s just that they’re the latest band of Tory shysters to not give a toss about it.
Which is why I graciously offer them a warning. Back in 1830, during that historic railway trip from Liverpool to Manchester, one of the first ever fatal train accidents occurred. When Tory MP William Huskisson stepped on to the line and was hit by an oncoming train. I’ll just park that there.
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