Prime minister Rishi Sunak, in an attempt to get his leadership of the Tory party back on track, announced the scrapping of the northern leg of the HS2 high speed rail project. His big speech at Conservative Party conference boasted of investing £36 billion in hundreds of other transport projects. Reeling off a list to applause, this was probably the first time the A1 was met with whoops!
But like when the consequences of a privatised, underfunded rail service catch up with your journey, many of these projects on the government’s website have come up ‘cancelled’ or taken off the boards without a word. In one instance, a tramline that has been open since 2015 was included on the list of future projects!
Quicker than you can travel from London to Birmingham, the list was deleted from the government’s website. The announced transport projects were actually just “examples” of what sort of projects could be funded, according to transport secretary Mark Harper.
Please mind the gap between Sunak’s promises and reality.
