It was all going so well, relatively speaking, for the Tories at Manchester. Sure, the party’s conference this week has been a little dull, flat, lifeless. But who wants any more Tory drama? Especially after last year’s excess of excitement, when the government led by the then Prime Minister Liz Truss disintegrated live at conference. A low-key, calm event this year suited Rishi Sunak’s team, providing a contrast with the chaos of the Truss era. That seemed to be the direction of travel.
And then HS2 came off the rails, or rather the government’s attempts to control the announcement about the future of the planned new high speed rail network came off the rails.
On Monday afternoon, several reports from authoritative sources appeared revealing the northern leg (Birmingham to Manchester) has been scrapped.
Andy Street, pro-HS2 Tory mayor of the West Midlands, was cornered by the media outside the Midland Hotel, the main conference watering hole. It is unclear whether or not he will remain a Conservative, or switch to being an independent.
A stunned Street said he would try to persuade Sunak to persist with HS2 to Manchester. He mentioned the possibility of getting private sector finance to underwrite the construction of the rest of the line.
Huw Merriman, HS2 minister, learned about the cancellation while appearing on a panel at conference. He looked uncomfortable and even upset, according to reports.
The decision has been made, it seems, although Number 10 does not want to announce it, yet. The attempts to stick to the line, no pun intended, look increasingly ridiculous when other parts of the government are briefing that HS2 is dead north of Birmingham.
Putting to one side the rights and wrongs of the decision, this is a bizarre situation for the Tory leadership to get itself into. The conference in Manchester has been in the diary for a long time. The Prime Minister has been mulling a change of policy for a while. It was always going to come to a head in some way, to the embarrassment of the government. The subject is such a perfect encapsulation of the Tory party’s problems – it involves retreating on a main strand of the levelling up agenda, running out of money, and going to Manchester and while there getting caught cancelling in the most messy way a fast rail link to Manchester.
On that basis a conference which had seemed well ordered to the point of blandness has now come alive in pretty disastrous style for the governing party. Governing party for now, that is.
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