Rishi Sunak will tomorrow confirm he is scrapping the HS2 link between Manchester and Birmingham, Coffee House understands. The prime minister will make the announcement in his conference speech as part of an argument about responsible government. He will, though, try to soften the political blow by detailing alternative rail projects in the north of England using the money.
The row about HS2 has dominated the Conservative party conference, with Sunak insisting only today that he wouldn’t be rushed into making a ‘premature’ decision about the future of the line. It seems he has now made that decision – or he has managed to stick to his own media grid which planned to announce the decision tomorrow, rather than rush it out when the news started to leak early. Sunak sees refusing to bow to the demands of the 24 hour news cycle as a virtue, but this does mean he has spent more of conference discussing what he isn’t doing than the things he wants the public to thank him for at the next election.
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