Sunak kills the Northern Powerhouse.

Andy Burnham and northern politicians have been shouting for years about the need for improved rail, bus, public transport links. Sunak is not coming up with new ideas
One of my favourites is the promise to send the metro to the airport. It’s been there for years

What on earth was Mrs.Rishi thinking of with her saccharine and cringemaking overture with him lurking in the wings. All engineered and not very well.

Haven’t read the whole thread, so apologies if someone has pointed this out already: the entire amount allocated to the north (much of which is for roads) is the same as that allocated for London’s Crossrail 2 alone.

As someone who lived in France for 26 years until 2022, it is difficult to understand the dreadful transport links in the North, such as between Sheffield and Manchester. This is as bad as when I had to do this journey at the age of 18 and that was nearly 50 years ago. Paris to Bordeaux in 2 hours, Paris Lyon in 2 hours and so on.

As JacquiOh says, more valuable would be upgrading a mass of transport links in the North -- and SOME northern pundits and politicos have agreed. Sunak seemed to be saying they'd be spending money on THOSE options, but whether that's just a sop or not we'll have to wait to see?

For Cabowitch and others -- the HS2 was originally a Labour plan, in the wretched Brown govt. Hopelessly underestimated, as have been so many 'public' projects over many years.

LizzieDrip

Agree with WW2 it’s all unicorns; pie in the sky; flying pigs. Like Johnson’s 40 new hospitals! Sunak knows he can promise billions of £s of new rail infrastructure in the North … because he knows he’ll never deliver it. We’ll have to put up with a year of this gaslighting before the General Election!

This - for sure

It’s not that simple to just upgrade tracks and run more trains. The railways need more capacity. In years to come that will become obvious but it will be too late then. Maybe the solution will be to remove all freight, just use the railways for passenger trains and put all freight on the roads. That will be great for the environment, won’t it.

Agree. HS2 would not have saved anything when going to London from Sheffield as we would have needed to travel outside the city centre away from the train station, before catching the HS2. This would add over 40 minutes to a journey that saves 20.

When I started commuting to Leeds 30 or 40 years ago, a standard diesel train made the journey in 40-45 minutes, with only one stop. Better links between Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield, Liverpool, Birmingham, and other Northern/Midland cities would be so much more valuable. Upgrade the track and signaling, run more frequent trains - just might be the answer.

Lots of local jobs, no devastation of farmland or housing, no need to compulsory purchase homes at knock down prices, revitalisation of our steel industry (if we still have one).

HS2 is a total waste of money. Billions of pounds spent, as Cabowich says woodland destroyed and environmental damage, houses demolished, businesses wrecked, and all to save something like 10-20 minutes over the whole journey.

A complete and utter waste of time and money

Apparently there's a planned connection to Victoria station in Sheffield. I'm not sure what its purpose is. The station has only been closed for 50 years and there's no track to it...

There have been suggestions about giving equal parity to technical education for years, no government has ever put any money into it, quite the reverse with the tories. It’s all fantasy anyway, you’d think the tories hadn’t been in power for 13 years. We need a change alright but not more of the same.

Well I'm "chuffed" 🚆 🚉 🚄 because we're getting a new station in Devon, that's if any of the train companies want to use it!!

varian

Who, if anyone, did he consult about his proposals for education?

There is a document in existence which shows that there are preliminary plans.

www.gov.uk/government/publications/a-world-class-education-system-the-advanced-british-standard

(dated 4th October)

I don’t think he consulted anyone about anything tbh. It seems he simply constructed a speech around his personal

It was a long hour of Sunak’s ideas.

Who, if anyone, did he consult about his proposals for education?

Whitewavemark2

The Guardian

Reckons that Sunak has exacerbated the Tory civil war.

He made the HS2 announcement without consulting the cabinet, parliament, councils or British Rail.

Which is odd, because apparently he made a video to announce his decision to scrap HS2 some time before the actual conference.

www.itv.com/news/2023-10-04/pm-filmed-axing-hs2-video-days-before-announcement-despite-denials-at-conference

The Guardian

Reckons that Sunak has exacerbated the Tory civil war.

He made the HS2 announcement without consulting the cabinet, parliament, councils or British Rail.

I suppose my worry is that our opposition - and it is ours as much as the government is - doesn't get to understand the progress of things until just before an election. If GB could manage to be open for 18 months ...

This gives a rounder view (from the same source. 10 Oct 2019)

Every prime minister since 1964 has authorised these talks, with successive prime ministers recognising how necessary they can be for a new government – while acknowledging that their party will one day be in opposition again.

The talks are essential, as they give the civil service an opportunity to prepare for what can be huge changes in departmental machinery and policy. They consist of a few meetings between shadow secretaries of state and the permanent secretary of the department they shadow, they can be one-to-one or include wider teams and they are restricted in what they can discuss. The talks warn the civil service of likely machinery of government changes or big policy areas that imply big changes. The guiding rule is that permanent secretaries must not provide policy advice.

Some prime ministers have been generous in allowing prolonged access – in the run up to the 2010 election, Gordon Brown allowed nearly 18 months for these contacts. In 2017, because of the snap election, Labour only had the period of the election campaign.

However, prime ministers sometimes hold off authorising the talks because they fear that it implies an election is likely or because they are so helpful to their opponents. Due to the Fixed-term Parliaments Act, the next election is not scheduled until 2022 – but the political realities of a minority government make an early snap election far more likely.

DaisyAnneReturns

Maisie I can't remember where I first read/heard this but it is detailed here:

www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/explainer/access-talks-civil-service

Thanks 👍

Maisie I can't remember where I first read/heard this but it is detailed here:

www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/explainer/access-talks-civil-service

MaizieD

Casdon

DaisyAnneReturns

Whitewavemark2

What I would add, is that they did not inherit remotely the absolute dire state that Starmer will inherit.

I am still trying to get my head around the fact that when any party can talk, or even be allowed to talk, to the Treasury, before an election, is in the "gift" of the PM still amazes me.

I really am beginning to think we need a basic codification of our constitution that makes a government have to be more open - or we could have a new law, I suppose.

What exactly do you mean DaisyAnneReturns, surely the opposition, and for that matter the public should fully understand the state of the public purse and the impact of government policy on expenditure?

Isn't DAR saying that parties aren't allowed to talk to the Treasury unless they've been given permission to do so by the PM?

I'd like to know a bit more about this statement. Where hss it come from, DAR?

I thought that may be what she meant, but I wasn’t sure whether permission is in practice refused, if it is a significant issue in terms of information being blocked, or whatever, I haven’t seen anything reported about it. That could easily be my bad though.

I think but don’t know for sure but more buses are suggested to aid Northern connections/connectivity. Doesn’t seem to be the best option?

It was actually Justine Greening (Tory) that gave the go-ahead for this, in 2012.

"In January 2012 the Secretary of State for Transport, Justine Greening, announced that HS2 would go ahead. It would comprise a "Y-shaped" network with stations at London, Birmingham, Leeds, Manchester, Sheffield and the East Midlands, conveying up to 26,000 people each hour at speeds of up to 400 kilometres per hour (250 mph).[33]

It would be built in two stages. Phase One would be a 225 km (140 mi) route from London to the West Midlands, to be constructed by 2026.[33] Phase Two, from Birmingham to both Leeds and Manchester, would be constructed by 2033; consultation on this phase would begin in early 2014, with a final route chosen by the end of 2014.

Additional tunnelling and other measures to meet local communities' and environmental concerns were also announced.[34] The legislative process would be achieved through two hybrid bills, one for each phase.[35]"

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_High_Speed_2