I’ve refrained from blogging much this month as I’ve been busy with other things but today I couldn’t resist returning to comment on a subject I’ve refrained from hardly commenting on at all recently. Politics.
But my spleen needs venting after watching the utter shit-show that passes for a Government nowadays and the ‘Prime Mendacitor’ surviving a no-confidence vote – amongst other things…
To be honest, when the news of the vote broke I suspected Johnson would win for a couple of reasons. One is – who is there with any honesty or intelligence within the Conservative front benches to replace him. Admittedly, that won’t be a question the Tory party will be asking because if they cared about those qualities they’d have never elected a pathological liar as leader in the first place! No, the question they’ll have asked themselves is “who could win us the next election”? Their problem is that it’s unlikely the electorate will fall for the same trick twice and Johnson has ensured that there’s no likely candidates around by appointing a bunch of people who no-one else would ever give a job to – and who owe him their positions. I mean, ‘Mad Nad’ Dorries? She shouldn’t be trusted with a supermarket check-out! Liz Truss? Really? The only one who was seen as a likely lad was Rishi Sunak but his star set when all the stuff came out about his American Green card and his his very wealthy wife’s tax and residence status. The odious and perma-smirking Priti Patel? The grandees would never go for her and I doubt many Tory members would too…
The Tories are in a fix of their own making. Some have a spine and some (albeit often deeply buried) scruples which is why the number voting against Johnson was so large. The likelihood now is that the party will continue to implode as it’s clear Johnson only has one policy, which is to hang on to No 10 at all costs. His acolytes, sorry – Cabinet – will do whatever they can to facilitate that so they can stay in office too.
Expect a series of policy volte faces (see HS2, more of which later), mad policy announcements and more dead cats than a pet cemetery. But it’s clear ordinary voters are starting to see the emperor has no clothes and treats the majority of them with contempt. On the 23rd June we have 2 by-elections. One in the ‘red wall’ seat of Wakefield and the other in the safe Tory seat of Tiverton and Honiton.
Polls suggest Labour will win back Wakefield with a large majority which is going to make other ‘red wall’ Tory MPs very nervous. The nerves could become even more frayed if the Lib-Dems pull off another Amersham and win Tiverton. Johnson is not out of the woods by a very long chalk.
Meanwhile, the damage caused to the economy by the Brexitshambles is becoming more and more obvious now they can’t hide the truth by blaming it on Covid. Even some of the Brexit cheerleaders in the media (The Daily Express for example) are sensing that they can only pull the wool over their dwindling number of readers for so long.
Sadly, the rot in the Tory party (wholesale infiltration of local constituency association by former UKIP members) that led to so many out of touch ideologues getting selected and elected was mirrored by the Labour party being similarly damaged by Corbynistas. Corbyn may be gone but the damage he’s done hasn’t. There’s some good people in the Parliamentary party but there’s not enough of them and Keir Starmer is hardly of the Tony Blair mould when it comes to charisma. We as a nation are not well served by our main political parties.
I said I’d come back to HS2 and the news of the dropping of the £3bn Golborne link which was designed to free up capacity on the very congested two-track section of the West Coast Main Line from Weaver Junction (North of Crewe) to a point just South of Wigan, bypassing the busy rail junction of Warrington. The HS2 Minister, Andrew Stephenson quietly slipped out the news just 30 minutes before Johnson’s no-confidence vote. That the cut was planned had been leaked a few weeks previously by Sir Ian Brady, the MP for Altrincham and Sale West and (it just so happens), Chair of the 1922 Committee, which oversees votes of no-confidence and who’s constituency the Golborne link would have passed through! What an amazing co-incidence!
The Golborne link was crucial to improving Anglo-Scottish train times and services as it would have helped make HS2 competitive on what’s Europe’s busiest internal air route. That from The Scottish central belt to London and the South-East. So, now – instead of a firm plan that was due to be passed by Parliament this year, we’ve a series of vague promises to “look again at alternatives”. in line with suggestions in Sir Peter Hendy’s Union Connectivity Review. What this naked bit of political pork-barreling will do is set back that section of high-speed line by years – IF it ever happens. It makes a mockery of the Government’s supposed commitment to carbon-reduction. Getting air passengers off those short-haul planes and onto trains would be a huge reduction in the worst kind of carbon emissions.
IF (and it’s a huge if) the Government did actually come up with a plan to move the connection between the WCML and HS2 further North to (say) just South of Preston, that would be better than the Golborne link as it would speed trains up even more and relieve more WCML. But Johnson (and his Transport Minister, Grant Shapps) have proved his Government simply can’t be trusted.
I suspect we’re going to see further rowing back on promises made in the (dis)integrated rail plan as this line was going to be funded from the HS2 budget but any revised route would be expected to come out of the supposed £96bn IRP pot.
So much for ‘leveling up’ eh? I only hope Northern voters see through this charade but I’m not holding my breath. Even some Labour MPs are welcoming another Tory cut – hence this nonsense from the Labour MP for Warrington North, Charlotte Nicols, who either doesn’t understand what the Golborne link was, or does but has played Nimby politics as the route passed through her constituency too. It’s worth of the ‘Green’ party in it’s hypocrisy, ‘supporting’ HS2 in principle, but welcoming cutting it in practice.
Reaction to Nicols Tweet wasn’t what she was expecting! Many people replied, pointing out what the MP was seemingly deliberately misunderstand and misleading. The Golborne link “not part of the line”? Oh, please!
I’ve no doubt this saga will continue…
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To save my blood-pressure and give my spleen a break I’ve steered clear from much political commentary recently. Let’s face it, if I was going to fact-check every lie our Transport Secretary and Prime Minister uttered I’d have a full-time job on my hands.
But today, the lies have really caught my eye because they’re on the back of a good news story which was announced earlier, which is that Crossrail – the new main line railway under London – will open on the 24th May. Of course tomorrow is the local elections across the UK in which the Tories are widely expected to get a spanking from the electorate. People are fed up of the lies and disinformation over Covid, Brexit and ‘Partygate’. The Tories answer? Double-down on the lies, get your friends in the media to plant ‘look over there’ stories and do *exactly* what you accuse your opponents of doing.
Today Transport Minister Grant Shapps tried to accuse Sadiq Khan, the Labour Mayor of London of breaking election ‘purdah’ rules by admitting that Crossrail would open this month (link). Really? Here’s Sadiq’s tweet – which makes no political point whatsoever.
Unlike Shapp’s Tweet an hour later which is emblazoned with the Conservative party logo…
It gets worse. The liar in chief, one Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, also known as the Prime Minister joined in with this tweet – in which he just couldn’t stop lying…
“I’m proud to have secured the investment”? Really? No. It’s a downright lie – as anyone who understands anything about the history of Crossrail knows.
The Crossrail Hybrid Bill was introduced to Parliament in February 2005 (under a Labour government). It passed 2nd reading on the 8th November 2007 (under a Labour Government). This meant the principle of the bill was established and anything else was a formality. The Bill was enacted (as in it received Royal Assent, so passed into law) on 22 July 2008 (under a Labour Government). Here’s what the Crossrail website says about the funding mechanism.
“The funding framework for Crossrail was put in place in October 2007 when the Prime Minister announced that Crossrail’s cost will be met by Government, the Mayor of London and London businesses. A funding envelope of £15.9 billion was agreed to deliver the Crossrail scheme in its entirety.“
Boris Johnson was elected Mayor of London in May 2008, long after the deals were done. He’s lying. Again.
I’ve a favour to ask… If you enjoy reading this or any of the other blogs I’ve written, please click on an advert or two. You don’t have to buy anything you don’t want to of course – although if you did find something that tickled your fancy that would be fab! – but the revenue from them helps me to cover some of the cost of maintaining this site (which isn’t cheap and comes out of my own pocket). Remember, 99% of the pictures used in my blogs can be purchased as prints from my other website – https://paulbigland.zenfolio.com/
*Warning – blog in progress. I can’t digest and dissect a complex 162 page report in one sitting, so more later*!
Finally, after months of delays. revisions and leaks the Governments Integrated Rail Plan was released today. What it says about scrapping the HS2 Eastern link to Leeds comes as no surprise to most people as this shambolic Government has been leaking details for months. Under Johnson and in his usual contempt for the political structures and Parliament, policy is no longer announced to Parliament, it’s drip-fed to the media first.
And, as usual, Johnson has reneged on promises and lied through his teeth. Even his supporters can no longer be surprised. Here’s a masterclass. Johnson gave this speech in Manchester back in 2019. In journalism, were told to ‘check against delivery’. As my colleague in the rail press Roger Ford observed, with Johnson it’s a case of checking against reality. See how many broken promises are delivered here.
Johnson just can’t help himself. He’s been a liar all his life (he’s been sacked for it twice) but he doesn’t care because no-one in his political career’s really ever held him to account for it – including the electorate. He’s lied again in the forward to the IRP, where he’s said;
“Our plan delivers high speed journeys, but also helps places on the existing lines. It creates new journey opportunities, but also serves the places people already want to go. It helps smaller places as well as big cities. It connects better with local public transport networks. It creates the capacity the rail network needs, in a way that can be delivered. And crucially, it brings benefit up to 10 years sooner.“
He just can’t help himself. 10 years ‘sooner’? Jon Stone of the Independent speared that lie by quoting from the actual report.
Grant Shapps pants are also on fire. He claims this in the IRP;
“Our plans go above and beyond the initial ambitions of HS2 and Northern Powerhouse Rail by delivering benefits for communities no matter their size, right across the North and Midlands, up to 10 to 15 years earlier“.
So, Johnson’s and Shapps raison d’être for cancelling the Eastern leg of HS2 and carving-up Northern Powerhouse Rail falls at the first hurdle. It’s exposed by the very report Johnson’s (ghost) written the forward for – but that’s no surprise as it runs to 162 pages and there’s no way on God’s green earth that Johnson (a man notorious for having no interest in or attention to detail) will have ever read it. This is not his work. In fact, when you read the report (and I have been doing). It becomes obvious how it’s been butchered and interfered with politically. So much of it is either contradictory or makes no sense. This is not about delivering projects ‘faster’, this is about saving a few quid in the short-term, and reneging on promises whilst dressing it up as something bigger, shinier and better. Johnson’s complained that building HS rail is ‘grindingly slow’ but deliberately ignores that much of the reason for this lies at his door! How many times has the project been delayed by Government reviews?
There’s so much nonsense at so many levels in all this, but I’ll start with the political.
Johnson’s wrecked political consensus for no good reason whatsoever
To find things that all the major political parties agree on is rare. HS2 was one of them. It’s had the agreement of all three major parties (and the SNP) since inception in 2009. It’s survived four Governments and four Prime Ministers. For Johnson to tear that up and make it a party-political issue is a sign of supreme ineptitude. There was no reason to do it. The reaction from Northern MPs of all parties (including his own) as well as other political leaders, businesses and the media shows just what a dumb political miscalculation this was. And all for what? The reaction of the media in the North has been equally savage, with the Sheffield Telegraph pulling no punches…
The result of his decision (or rather, going along with whatever some advisors have written for him) is to trash the Governments reputation in yet another area. Forget ‘levelling up’ the North-South divide. This policy paper lays out the fact there’s not only no levelling up, there’s now a new divide – an East-West divide. London, Birmingham, Crewe and Manchester and the rest of the West coast get and benefit from HS2. The East? The East can get stuffed! Derbyshire, Yorkshire and the North-East are part of that new divide. They don’t even get any crumbs for the ‘Northern Powerhouse’ table. HS2 East ends in the East Midlands. After that, all anyone else can expect is upgraded lines which will severely limit capacity to enable higher-speed (but not HS2 speed) trains to run on them – with all the consequent damage to local, regional and freight services this will entail. Even the new ‘Northern Powerhouse Rail’ lines Johnson promised so often won’t get to Leeds. Instead, we’re told the only new line will be from Manchester to ‘East of the Standedge Tunnel’ which is just over the border into West Yorkshire!
Politically, the question now is will Labour be smart enough to capitalise on Johnson’s obvious betrayal on his commitments to ‘levelling up’ the North-South divide (never mind creating a new East-West one) and threaten to claw back the so-called ‘red wall’ seats Labour lost under the disastrous leadership of Jeremy Corbyn? After all, Johnson’s left them an open goal…
The reaction from political leaders and the media right across the areas that would have benefitted from HS2 and NPR has been pretty damning (and ‘damning’s a word I hate using as it’s often a journalistic cliche, but not in this case). The political fallout from these decisions is not going to go away. Johnson’s managed to upset Northern politicians of all political colours – including his own.
Johnson’s financial sleight of hand.
In typical ‘look over there’ tactics. Johnson has spun the cuts he’s making to HS2 and NPR as “the biggest ever public investment in Britain’s rail network”. £96bn is quoted. Now, ignoring the fact more than this has been invested in the railways since privatisation by successive Governments, this figure disguises the fact that if Johnson had kept his promises to deliver HS2 and NPR in full, the Govt would be spending £185bn (as it claims in the report preamble), so we’re £89bn short of what Johnson had originally promised. As Louise Gittins, Interim Chair of Transport for the North pointed out, saying “Our statutory advice asked for an over £40 billion network but the Government has decided to provide even less than half of that.”
Dressing up cuts to rail spending in the North as a ‘win’ is classic Johnson. In fact, we don’t even know exactly how much will really be spent or what will actually be delivered as many projects that were expected to go ahead (like the HS2 Golborne link North of Warrington) have now been placed ‘under review’.
Johnson’s new East-West divide
This graphic from the Press Association show just how much of HS2 has been cut and how Johnson’s now built a new East-West divide.
Some opponents of HS2 on the Eastern leg have been celebrating the mothballing of the route, blissfully unaware that the route hasn’t been completely cancelled. In fact, the route will be ‘safeguarded’, meaning the blight they’ve suffered will continue.
Outright porkies.
The government also used the rail plan to recommit to transpennine electrification and the electrification of the midland mainline – projects which it had previously announced and then cancelled, only to re-announce. So, this isn’t new money, this is money that should already have been spent. The report also seems very confused about this, as this section shows.
Eh? Whoever rewrote the report is clearly unaware that Kettering is already electrified and that the wires are already being extended to Market Harborough. Oh, and Leicester, Loughborough, Grantham, Newark, Retford and Doncaster and Wakefield would have seen a lot of released capacity from the Eastern leg of HS2 – which has been canned! As for Dewsbury and Huddersfield – they were already set to benefit from the Trans-Pennine route upgrade which is delivering 4 tracking an electrification. Stalybridge? That was due to be electrified as part of Northern Powerhouse Rail – but it was postponed by the then Transport Minister, Chris Grayling. So, this whole section is complete cobblers – a blatant untruth in fact because cancelling the Eastern leg of HS2 will guarantee many of these places see a worse service. HS2E was meant to release capacity on the East Coast and Midland Main Lines as well as at the notorious bottleneck at Leeds station.
This is hardly the only porkie. Transport Minister Grant Shapps has also been spinning like a top and got called out for it by Matt on Twitter.
Sticking Nottingham on this map is particularly disengenuous. Yes, (in theory) it will gain direct HS2 services that will run on the classic network from East Midlands Parkway, but its services Northwards will suffer due to the capacity HS2 East would have provided vanishing. Plus, HS2 East would have massively cut journey times between Nottingham and Birmingham. These times will now be extended as Toton’s been scrapped and passengers will have to travel to East Midlands Parkway to get to Birmingham.
It’s no surprise that Shapps is trying to spin. Remember this load of bull?
That claim aged well…
Yorkshire’s stuffed.
The biggest loser in all this is Yorkshire. Leeds was meant to have gained a brand-new HS2 station that would have relieved that notorious bottleneck that’s the existing station. There was meant to be a dedicated high-speed line all the way to Birmingham (scrapped as far as East Midland Parkway) plus a spur to Church Fenton to take HS2 trains onto York, freeing up capacity on the ECML between York and London. That’s been canned too. Instead, we’re meant to be getting an ‘upgraded’ East Coast Main Line. There’s only one teeny problem.
The whole raison d’être of a dedicated high-speed line was the fact it added capacity to existing lines by taking high-speed, non-stop intercity trains OFF the existing lines. Now, we’re being told the ECML will be upgraded to 140mph to allow the existing trains to be speeded up. This does the OPPOSITE of adding capacity! It means some stopping services will have to be cut to make space for them. Even replacing some sections of four-tracking isn’t going to be able to prevent this – and you still have the bottleneck at Doncaster to contend with!
So, instead of getting a network of HS lines across Yorkshire and a brand new HS2 station in Leeds, Yorkshire gets;
“a study to look at the best way to take HS2 trains to Leeds, including capacity at Leeds Station”.
Whoopty do…
Bradford. Shafted again.
Another big loser from the Government’s climb-down on NPR is Bradford. Forget all the ideas of a new station or new line. All Bradford gets is the promise of electrification of the line to Leeds and faster, non-stop services to that city. No mention of how these new services are going to fit into the already congested Leeds station now it’s not going to have capacity released by HS2. Instead there’s just more vague promises, as Shapps says in is forward;
“IRP provides £100m to to look at the most effective way to run HS2 trains to Leeds, including understanding the most optimal solution for Leeds station capacity.
We already knew the answer to that, Shapps, but you’ve gone and scrapped it…
Right, let’s have a look at what the Executive summary tells us. It claims the Govt will build three new ‘high-speed lines’. Really? One has been on the drawing board for years – the HS2 line from Crewe to Manchester, so it’s hardly ‘new’, just a reannouncement. Oh, and they’re not even planning to build all of it either. The vital Golborne link which will bypass the WCML bottleneck at Warrington is yet another project that’s ‘under review’.
The second is the rump of HS2 East, from Birmingham to East Midlands Parkway. This is also only ‘new’ in the sense it’s not been built, despite having been announced years ago.
The only really ‘new’ bit is this.
“On Northern Powerhouse Rail (NPR), we will build a new high speed line between Warrington, Manchester and Yorkshire”.
But even this is being dishonest, because much of the line isn’t new at all, as the report admits;
“we have chosen the first, a mix of newbuild line and upgrade via Huddersfield, and extended our commitment to Liverpool (giving 40 miles of new high speed line), and York. NPR trains will use fully electrified, expanded and upgraded conventional lines between Liverpool and Warrington, and from the east of Standedge tunnels to Leeds.
The truth is, much of this is plans to reuse the former freight line from Ditton East Jn near Widnes to Warrington Bank Quay (where the low level station would be reopened) then Eastwards, one assumes over the former line to Manchester that was closed back in the early 1980s. Quite how this will be reconfigured and rebuilt as a ‘high’ speed line is a very good question! As always, the devil’s in the detail. Well. it would be if there was any!
It’s the same with the next claims, such as;
“We will fully electrify and upgrade the Transpennine Main Line between Manchester, Leeds and York”
Really? How?
The report says;
“Previous plans involved only partial electrification of the route, partial digital signalling, one section of four-tracking and very limited freight improvements. Recognising that the Transpennine Route Upgrade (TRU) will now be significantly expanded to enable NPR, it will be managed as the first phase of NPR. We will now electrify the whole route, install full digital signalling, and add longer sections of three and four-tracking to allow fast trains to overtake stopping services, leading to an initial increase in through passenger services of 20% compared with the preCOVID-19 situation, with further additional services running once the new link to Manchester Piccadilly is in place. We will improve clearances for freight, allowing increased goods operation and taking thousands of lorries a month off the M62. This first phase will allow electric services between Liverpool and Newcastle, result in significant improvements to local services all along the line, and reduce journey times from Manchester to Leeds from 55 now to 33 minutes. Once the newbuild high speed line between the Standedge area and Manchester Piccadilly opens, under later NPR phases, it will further reduce the journey to 33 minutes and increase seat capacity by over 300%”.
So, no new line to Leeds, just a rebuilding (part of which was already going ahead) of the existing Trans-Pennine line via the Colne Valley via Huddersfield. In fact, the ONLY new section of line will be from East of Manchester Piccadilly through to the Marsden area just East of the existing Standedge tunnel – and that’s all we know – as there’s no details.
So, how’s this going to be gauge-enhanced for freight? OK, avoiding the existing Standedge tunnel is good, but there’s another elephant in the room here that’s not being mentioned. The original TRU plans ended at Huddersfield, as did the electrification. Why? Well, there’s two pairs of rather awkward tunnels immediately to the West of the station, the Huddersfield and Gladholt tunnels. You can see them here.
The Huddersfield tunnels. Note the original tunnel on the left is a much smaller bore? Wiring and gauge-clearing these might prove to be ‘interesting’ (as well as expensive and disruptive). Behind the camera is a 2nd pair of tunnels with the same problems. Forget a new line from Leeds to Manchester, a ‘revamp’ of this Victorian infrastructure is all we get In Yorkshire as the new line ends as it crosses the border from Greater Manchester!
Today, it happened. The Tory party faithful elected serial liar Boris Johnson as their new Leader and next Prime Minister. Teresa May stands down tomorrow and Johnson takes over. Britain’s 3 year journey into farce continues. Yet again, we’ve proved to the rest of the world just how insular and inward we’re becoming, as well as how irrelevant. Having humiliated the UK in front of the world as a feckless Foreign Secretary, Johnson’s been handed a bigger stage for his incompetence and room for his ego. It will not go well.
His acceptance speech was classic Johnson. It was a lesson in banality and vacuous soundbites. One where we were told Britain will thrive under him and Brexit if we just “believe”. He’s like a backwoods preacher selling the afterlife to the credulous. But then Brexit is akin to a religion to some. Logic and facts are nothing when you have faith.
It’ll all unravel of course. The EU’s already pissed on his chips by immediately announcing that there will be no renegotiation of the deal stuck between them and Teresa May. So whose head is he going to hold a gun to, other than his own? It’s like that surreal moment from Mel Brooks classic film ‘Blazing Saddles’
Meanwhile, various Tories are giving up their portfolios and making it very clear they won’t serve in a Johnson Government. Other Tories are fawning on Twitter, praising Johnson for his ‘achievements’ and ability to “get things done” in the hope of a junior job. On Thursday we’ll start to see what appointments he makes. It’s unlikely to be a pretty sight. No doubt swivel-eyed loons will feature highly as nobody else will be dumb enough to take the poisoned chalice. His cabinet will be more MFI than Chippendale. I doubt it’ll take long before it starts to fall apart…
I wonder how long it’ll take for the Brexit fanatics to twig that Johnson is no more capable of delivering Brexit than anyone else? Parliament is likely to be a pretty rancorous and raucous place over the next few months as different groups of MPs try to block any no deal Brexit. Johnson will be thrust into the national spotlight in a way he’s never been before and his bombast and bluster won’t save him now.
Let’s remember something. Johnson didn’t get into politics through ANY notion of public service. Throughout his life and career he’s proved he only cares about one thing. His overwhelming sense of entitlement and ambition. Then look at what his employers & co-workers say about him. Lazy, disorganised, no attention to detail and no loyalty to anyone other than himself. This character is now our Prime Minister.
In a move that will surprise few, Alan Duncan MP has resigned from the Foreign Office. Having suffered the incompetence of Boris Johnson as Foreign Minister it’s clear he’s no intention of serving under him as Prime Minister!
To say this comes at an awkward time is an understatement. The FO still hasn’t recovered from the damage Johnson caused and already has one Minister suspended. Just what we need with the Iranian’s saber-rattling in the Gulf!
Of course Duncan is merely the first one out of the traps and at least he’s stayed in the party. Who’ll be next? Chancellor Philip Hammond has already announced he’ll resign on Wednesday if Johnson wins tomorrow. Plus, there’s newspaper reports that up to six Tory MPs are in discussions with the Liberal Democrats about joining the party.
This really could prove interesting as it would leave Johnson without any majority in Parliament and facing some politically savvy opposition from his own back-benches. Johnson’s not a clever politician. Devious and blustering, yes, but not clever. The cracks are already starting to show and he’s not even taken office yet! The chances of a serious split in the Tory party are becoming more likely, especially if Johnson surrounds himself with ideological Brexit headbangers in his Cabinet. You wouldn’t trust most of them to run a whelk stall, never mind a country.
If only we had an opposition party and Leader worth the name. At this rate, it looks like the Lib-Dems will assume that role. Since I wrote this it’s been announced that Jo Swinson MP has been voted in as the new Lib-Dem leader, making the Labour party the only one of the triumvirate (Labour, Tory & Lib-Dem) to never have elected a woman.
I can’t help laughing, I really can’t! Those of us who’ve observed the formerly occasional London Mayor Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson for years have known that you can’t trust him as far as you can throw him. HS2 antis however, have always been good at grasping any straw. So much so they could have thatched the dome of the O2 arena with them by now.
Today, the predictable has happened. The Birmingham Mail has carried an exclusive story from the Tory leadership hustings in Birmingham. Written by Johnathan Walker, the piece reports that Mr Johnson said: “I have already asked provisionally Douglas Oakervee, who was the original chair of Crossrail, to have a look at the business case for HS2 and to think about whether and how we proceed.”
Chair of Crossrail eh? Hang on a minute, Oakervee was ALSO HS2 Ltd Chairman between Apr 2012 – Dec 2013! Does anyone honestly think Oakervee, a man who’s been building major civil engineering projects (including railways) around the world for decades, and who’s seen their transformational impacts, is going to say “HS2? Nah, scrap it”.
Furthermore, Johnson is also quoted as saying “I worry about cancelling a big national project of that scale without anything else to replace it.” Now, given Johnson’s penchant for large infrastructure projects that he can put his not inconsiderable ego – sorry – name to, does anyone seriously think he’s going to cancel HS2?
Even some HS2 antis are beginning to realise that they’re on to a loser as Johnson isn’t the only Tory leadership hopeful to row back from opposition to HS2. I predict further wailing and gnashing of teeth from what’s left of the StopHs2 camp as it’s clear the political support of regional leaders like Birmingham’s Mayor Andy Street (a fellow Tory to Johnson) and Labour Mayors in the North is firmly behind HS2. If he manages to become PM, Johnson’s going to need some good news pretty fast – and cancelling HS2 isn’t it. It might satisfy a tiny bunch of Nimbys and the lobbyists of 55 Tufton St, but the political shit-storm it would unleash in the Midlands and the North (not to mention in London) is the last thing Johnson would need.
UPDATE.
My old friend Alan Marshall has been in touch to remind me of something…
“Despite Boris seemingly (or reportedly) being very anti-HS2, in fact when he was Mayor of London he was very much for it . . . so much so that in 2015 he set up the Old Oak and Park Royal Development Corporation to exploit the opportunities arising from the OOC interchange with the new Crossrail station to be built on the GWML. What’s more, he made himself the first chairman of the OOPRDC”.
No HS2 = no OOPRDC = no 24,000 new homes and no 55,000 jobs…
Paul Bigland 