The north-south rebrand won’t stop HS2 becoming the new symbol of Tory disunity

There was no chance the Conservatives could come to Manchester, with a row over the future of high-speed rail raging, and not make a big thing of the proposed new railway line. But as I explained in my Telegraph column last week, the party knew that a little crafty rebranding wouldn’t go amiss, and so when Patrick McLoughlin spoke to conference this morning, he placed as much emphasis on the uniting power of the new ‘north-south’ line as he did on the economic or capacity-based arguments that the government have focused on so far.