Did the North want HS2 in the first place?

WHO is this talking? “The difficult thing with HS2 is the chopping and changing. You can’t build infrastructure on this scale in this way

- Chris Blackhurst

But we argue that it’s not the right solution for Manchester anyway. We should have north-south and east-west links but if you pinned me to a wall, I would prioritise cross-northern travel. Liverpool and Manchester pioneered rail travel in the 19th century and we don’t have functional rail travel between the two cities in the 21st century!”

It was Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, in an interview with Robert Crampton of the Times, published on February 11, 2023. So eight months ago, Burnham said, “it’s not the right solution for Manchester anyway… if you pinned me to a wall, I would prioritise cross-northern travel.”

Rishi, get pinning. What Burnham, “King of the North” as he is popularly described, was expressing is what every Northerner knew. I’m from there, I know exactly what he meant, that the need was not for faster trains up and down, but across.

That’s what Northern Powerhouse was about, as Burnham said: “George Osborne’s Northern Powerhouse vision was predicated on bringing northern cities closer together to punch their weight as a cluster. But in 10 years, rail travel across the North has got worse.”