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I’m not going to pull any punches here but neither am I going to get into too much detail right now as I’m too bloody angry and still gathering data.
Here’s what I do know. Sunak has lied. Big time and repeatedly – and this is all down to him. Cabinet responsibility my arse. From what I’ve been told by various sources no-one had a clue what he was going to say until the very last moment. Many not even then.
No-one in the railway industry had any idea. Nor in HS2 Ltd, or the Infrastructure Commission. The Regional Mayors of the cities affected (including the Mayor of London) hadn’t the foggiest. None of the people who should have been consulted on cancelling the biggest civil engineering project in Europe were consulted – at all. This was a decision made by one man – and whoever’s been whispering in his ear.
Because Sunak lied to everyone.
He insisted just a few days ago that ‘no decision had been taken’ He lied. How do we know? Because shortly after his appalling speech at the Tory party conference this document, titled ‘Network North’ was slipped out on the DfT (who hadn’t been consulted either) website.
It’s 35 pages long. There’s no way on God’s green earth this was cobbled together over last weekend – although cobbled together it was. It’s appalling and I’ll be pulling it apart in another blog.
Sunak is claiming that by cancelling phase 2 of HS2 he has £36bn to spend on transport projects around the UK. It’s a lie. There are no £36bn savings. The money doesn’t exist. None of these projects could possibly happen before the next election. The budgeted spend on HS2 phase 2 over the next 5 years is around £3bn. The small print on page 24 of ‘Network North’ gives the game away. These schemes are a wish list that have no business case (and never will) nor planning permission or any other of the legal hoops such schemes have to jump through. Plus, the amounts they’re supposedly meant to cost are pure guesswork. It’s a con, an election con.
HS2 Phase 2 had (to quote Sunak’s laughable phrase) ‘spades in the ground’. He’s scrapped a scheme that was actually being built for ‘jam tomorrow’ but he knows he won’t be around to make any of them happen. It’s pure bullshit, and the party faithful (and the gullible) will fall for it – as well as a few parochial Northern luddites. He’s set rail investment and tackling Climate Change back by a generation. Oh, and don’t even get me started on the faux Greens who’re welcoming the decision to cancel a green railway to divert the money to road building instead. I have a special circle in hell reserved for them…
We are all being lied to – big time. We need to start understanding that – and we need to start doing something about it. Much of the national and nearly all of the regional media are doing an appalling job on this because they’re not doing the obvious and following the money. What money? The £36bn is a fantasy, as HS2 Ltd and Government accounts show – so why are they not pointing this out?
I’ve a small favour to ask…
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Paul Bigland 
He really is a dreadful excuse for a human being. But then from the past years all the conservative PMs have been. It’s abhorrent how they can renege on election promises.
Even worse. Sunak has destroyed a cross-party political consensus that goes back to 2009. Those things are rare.
🤬
To give some context here, I live in Ely in Cambridgeshire. It’s an area that is suffering from being grossly over developed. I was hopeing HS2 & levelling up would help to encourage new development away from Cambridgeshire and instead move it further north to areas that would benefit.
I wonder how long it will be before northern power house gets scrapped too, and instead we see money being spent on Crossrail 2 (which would probably mean HS2 does make tit to Euston)?
Northern ‘powerhouse’ that became the ‘Integrated Rail Plan’ (£96bn) is dead. Now we have ‘Network North’ which is just another sham. It’s a con. It’s a cobbled together list of projects that there’s been no consultation on and where many aren’t even at the feasibility stage. The £36bn funding doesn’t exist. The projects don’t exist. They’re just fictitious schemes to adorn local election leaflets with, promising ‘jam tomorrow’ if you’d only vote Tory.
I always thught that Hs2 would end up in the lessens to be learned pile with APT, nightstar, regional eurostar and merseytram. Sadly, i still fear the rest of hs2 will join this pile.
The big take aways from this are.
1. The southern end of the of the route was the most controversial. As a result it incurred most of the opposition, delays and subsequent extra cost. If the northern section and hs3 had been built first the project would have ran far smoother, quicker and cheaper.
2. A high emphasis on speed rather than capacity proved a PR open goal when it didnt need to be. A 250mph railway was still possible if it was marketed as WCML bypass not HD2
3 The grreens were not taken on board and reasurred thus making enemies we didn’t need to have.
The priority now should be to stop labour backing out of HS3
To conclude, 1) we need to get on with the track building for HS3 making use of existing stations, instead of expensive new ones.
2 Lots of stations need to be on the new route with smarter timetables so each express takes in one smaller station ( as is the case with Tamworth WCML and retford ECML)
3 The line must branded so no mention of jeourney times or linespeeds are given. Might I suggest Pennine bypass or northern patriot rail.
4 When crossrail 2 comes knocking for the funding or “other projects” (and it most certainly will) it must be HS2 remaing leg most take the bullet for HS3.
HS3 is now and always was the best prospect of high-speed trains in Britain.