Are the Tories going to spend all week in Manchester talking but not talking about HS2? Speculation that Rishi Sunak might chop a leg off the line has now been swirling for more than a week, but the Prime Minister and his ministers are refusing to offer any further details.
Yesterday, Transport Secretary Mark Harper said he wanted to be asked about something else at a fringe, while Sunak himself said he wouldn’t comment on ‘speculation’. This never makes the questions go away, and they know it.
Even with these pots of money, there isn’t enough tangible evidence that any sort of levelling up is happening
There are some rumours at the Conservative conference this morning that there might actually be an announcement on the future of the line today, which would go some way to explaining why ministers have been resisting offering details. But it is a contrast with the way Sunak handled the early leaking of his changes to net zero policy: when the plans appeared in the papers, the Prime Minister hastily brought forward his speech on the matter and ended the speculation. On HS2, he has allowed the rumours to continue, the criticism to build and the conference in a disused railway station in Manchester to start without any clarity about whether the city will get a new line or not.
Last night on the BBC’s Westminster Hour, Transport Minister Rich Holden offered some insight into why the Conservatives are more relaxed about the impression this ongoing uncertainty creates. He argued that ‘this was not sold as a flagship levelling up project… this was sold as a capacity project to deal with the connection between central London and central Manchester’.
He added, ‘Levelling up is not to do with central London and central Manchester and the connections between our major cities. Actually, levelling up is about towns and villages out there in the wider north of England and the wider Midlands.’
Holden then asked whether the ‘capacity argument is still there as part of the benefit-cost ratio’. Sunak had earlier in the day announced a new spending pot for ‘left-behind towns’ such as Skegness and Great Yarmouth, just to emphasise the point that levelling up is focused on smaller, less vibrant locations than Manchester. It is because of this that the Conservatives think they can still say they are committed to levelling up.
Either way, a problem for the party is that even with these £20 million pots of money for towns, there isn’t enough tangible evidence that any sort of levelling up is happening. Red wall voters only lent their votes to the Conservatives in 2019 and have been looking for signs they can trust the party in order to back them again.
Privately many Tory MPs say they can’t see the spades in the ground in their areas that will give those voters enough of a sense that things are at least moving in the right direction. They point to areas like Teesside as isolated examples of levelling up actually happening, but are worried that the benefits won’t be obvious within the next year as they move into campaign mode. That will be the case whatever the shape of HS2 by the end of this conference.
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