The mood inside the headquarters of Cheshire East council was dark. Sam Corcoran, the normally amiable leader, did not want to watch Rishi Sunak’s speech. “What’s the point?” grumbled the Labour councillor. “He’s already trailed what he’s going to say. It’s a disgrace.”
He was cajoled into watching a bit regardless, eating his packed lunch as he sat through Akshata Murty’s fawning introduction – “this is torture” he groaned – before the prime minister stood up in front of a slogan promising “long-term decisions for a brighter future” and cancelled the project Corcoran and colleagues had spent the best part of a decade pinning their hopes on.
If there is a biggest loser of the demise of HS2’s northern leg it is probably Crewe, the original railway town. The Birmingham to Crewe leg – phase 2a in HS2 parlance – received royal assent in 2021, meaning it was written into law, unlike the Crewe to Manchester spur, which had yet to be voted on fully by MPs when Sunak binned it on Wednesday.
At least £900m has already been spent on phase 2a, including almost £220m buying up 239 properties on the route. Crewe was supposed get a new HS2 station, enveloped by a commercial hub providing 37,000 jobs and 7,000 new homes by 2043. The bogies (chassis) for HS2 trains were going to be built in Crewe and HS2 trains were supposed to be put to bed each night at a depot just north of the town.
And now? Nothing, it would seem. Sunak’s speech at Wednesday lunchtime had more than 7,500 words. None of them were “Crewe” or even “Cheshire”. He promised trams for Leeds, a new station for Bradford, better connections between Manchester and Liverpool and even an upgrade on the road from Scotland to the ferry to Northern Ireland. But diddly squat for Crewe, spiritual gateway to the north of England.
Corcoran and his deputy, independent councillor Craig Browne, were gutted. “We feel ignored and we feel forgotten,” said Browne. It’s a sad day for Cheshire East.”
“The government is shambolic,” said Corcoran, seeing it as a sign “the Conservatives have given up on Crewe”, a bellwether seat they won back from Labour in 2019.
The council will now have to write off £8m it has already spent preparing for HS2 and accept that the £750m annual gross value added it thought the railway would bring – along with 5,000 extra jobs each year – was not coming.
“It’s going to leave a massive black hole in our economy,” said Browne, with Corcoran adding: “It’s also going to be appalling for all those people who have had their houses compulsory purchased, or their farms effectively closed down. And now it’s all for nothing.”
Browne said Cheshire East was “still waiting to see any of this levelling up”, noting that the government has twice rejected applications from Crewe and Macclesfield from the “levelling up fund”.
He added: “Sunak told us in a speech that levelling up is not just about building a strategic railway connection, and is also about bus services and filling in potholes. But this council didn’t receive any funding for its bus service improvement plan and our highway maintenance repair grant from the government was cut three years ago by 21%. And it’s been frozen in the two subsequent years.”
Crewe would not exist without trains. Before the Grand Junction Railway built a station in the fields near Crewe Hall in 1837, the nearest village had just 70 residents. “My ancestors actually came to Crewe in the 1830s after being farmers on the Wales-Shropshire border for four centuries,” said Browne. “They came to Crewe because of the opportunity that the railway brought. That shows you the potential that a major connecting infrastructure project delivers in terms of jobs and economic growth.”
Volunteering at the Crewe Alexandra stall in the town’s newly renovated market hall, Trevor Griffiths was fuming. “It makes me so angry that someone can make that decision who wasn’t even voted in by his own party,” he said of Sunak. “You’ve got [the Greater Manchester mayor] Andy Burnham, the mayor of the West Midlands, [Andy Street] the mayor of Liverpool [city region, Steve Rotheram] all asking him to keep HS2 and he ignores them. One person shouldn’t be able to make such a monumental decision alone.”
He continues: “You don’t stop a project halfway through. It would be like building a house and starting with the conservatory and stopping there. We’re miles behind other countries. Look at France, look at Japan, they’ve had bullet trains since the 1960s.”
Max Clayton, the manager of Jordy’s Pizza, thought the cancellation was “a bit embarrassing”, adding: “I would have loved to see it fulfilled. It would be really cool thing to be able to get to London in an hour. It makes us as a country look a shambles.”
Jan Andrews, having a drink with her son, Jonathan Bell, was annoyed that while scrapping the northern leg, Sunak committed to an extra £5bn or so to finish the London leg at Euston. “Everything seems to benefit London,” she said. “We’re just the poor relations.”
“England is very London-centric,” said 19-year-old Crystal Garrett. “They” are down in London, said her friend Kris Taso, meaning Sunak and the government. “They’re doing it for themselves.”
