David Cameron insists that a project like high-speed rail needs cross-party support. That may well be sensible, but his desire for Labour to retain its support for the new line is founded more on the necessity of getting the legislation through Parliament, rather than a great belief in parties working together on the big things. The fact is that Cameron needs Labour votes because yet again he cannot rely on his own party, the party of government, to push the bills through.
Labour obviously scents blood, not just because there’s sport to be had in making a Prime Minister squirm and plead for the Opposition’s votes, but also because dropping support for HS2 would lend the party some useful credibility. Today on LabourList, new Shadow Transport Secretary Mary Creagh writes this:
‘The Labour Party cannot – and will not – give the Government a blank cheque. That is what you would expect from any credible official opposition seeing a Government desperately mismanaging a project.’
Danny Alexander today insisted on Marr that HS2 would be under budget, adding darkly as a message to Labour that ‘what we’re concerned about is not just London and the South East of England – which you are obsessed about – and the City of London when you were in office , what we’re concerned about is the economic health of the whole country’.
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