Who is this talking? “The difficult thing with HS2 is the chopping and changing. You can’t build infrastructure on this scale in this way. But we argue that it’s not the right solution for Manchester anyway. We should have north-south and east-west links but if you pinned me to a wall, I would prioritise cross-northern travel. Liverpool and Manchester pioneered rail travel in the 19th century and we don’t have functional rail travel between the two cities in the 21st century!”
It was Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, in an interview with Robert Crampton of the Times, published on February 11, 2023. So eight months ago, Burnham said, “it’s not the right solution for Manchester anyway… if you pinned me to a wall, I would prioritise cross-northern travel.”
Rishi, get pinning. What Burnham, “King of the North” as he is popularly described, was expressing is what every Northerner knew. I’m from there, I know exactly what he meant, that the need was not for faster trains up and down, but across.
That’s what Northern Powerhouse was about, as Burnham said: “George Osborne’s Northern Powerhouse vision was predicated on bringing northern cities closer together to punch their weight as a cluster. But in 10 years, rail travel across the North has got worse.”
The North of England never asked for HS2. I never heard anyone Northern, family members (I am from Cumbria, my wife from Cheshire) or friends, call for a high-speed rail link with London.
Indeed, the journey times have improved so much — down to only two hours 10 minutes from London to Manchester — that they earned praise. No one said they had to be shorter still.
Always, the issue was trans-Pennine, from Liverpool and Manchester to Leeds, Sheffield, Hull.
That was bad.
Added to that, only one cross-country motorway meant getting around the North as opposed to going to and from London, was often nightmarish, even though the distances were short.
London thought it knew best. Whitehall determined that the main rail services to Birmingham and the North-West, to Manchester and Liverpool, were going to be full to bursting as Britain moved away from the car. What was required was more frequent, quicker and longer trains.
That last point explains part of the reason why HS2 cost so much — new stations and platforms would have to be built.
There was an element of national pride involved as well. Unlike other European countries — France, Germany, Spain — Britain is not blessed with high-speed trains. Currently, there is one, to the Channel Tunnel.
Not having them, it was felt, made the country appear backwards. In the race to attract investors, this was thought to matter. Opportunities to pull back or end the scheme came and went, not least in the Boris Johnson period in No 10.
It would not have been a white elephant. The train line would have been used. Journey times would have been reduced, although only by minutes; there would have been more trains, with more seats; and they would have been sleek and modern. But it was a step too far.
Significantly, much of the noise against Sunak’s decision is from Burnham and from Andy Street, mayor of the West Midlands.
So far, there has been scarcely a peep from their opposite numbers in Sheffield and Leeds and other northern places. Why is that?
Could it be they are fed up anyway, of everything flowing through Manchester, which perpetually hogs the media and political limelight, and the cash?
