A Tale of Two Transport Systems: Westminster’s Persistent Abandonment of The North of England

Ben Curtis argues that the scrapping of HS2 is no isolated incident, but is instead the latest evidence of Westminster’s persistent abandonment of the North of England.

Image by John Winder via Wikimedia Commons

In January 2009, the then Labour government gave the green light to the HS2 network, a revolutionary high speed rail project that promised to galvanise Britain’s Victorian rail infrastructure. When the Conservative-Lib Dem Coalition threw their support behind it, HS2 seemed almost inevitable. How naïve we were. On the 4th of October, Rishi Sunak pulled the plug on the Manchester-Birmingham leg of the project, depriving the North of England of the investment it desperately needs. It is essential to note, however, that HS2’s cancellation was no mere coincidence, but instead the latest instalment of Westminster’s long held contempt for the North of England.

There is no more tangible metric of this regional inequality than the state of Britain’s regional Public Transport systems. If you want to get around London, not only can you use the Tube, considered by CNN to be the best metro system in Europe, but Boris Bikes, Red Buses, Black Cabs, and even a gimmicky £60 Cable Car ensure that you can get exactly where you want to be in the city. It’s a fantastically well integrated transport system and is one that is constantly being built upon. Only last year was the new £18.6 billion Elizabeth Line opened, and it is forecast to improve Underground capacity by 10%. Despite their frequent complaints about the state of London Transport, Londoners fail to realise how fortunate they are; Manchester, Liverpool, and Leeds are all transport wastelands in comparison. 

The facts speak for themselves: Leeds is the largest city in Europe without a light rail or underground network; 44 of Liverpool’s 97 metro trains have been in service since the late 1970s; and only in September this year did Manchester finally integrate its bus network. The most recent excitement for Leeds residents was the introduction of “Beryl Bikes” (in the vein of Boris Bikes), but with only 21 docking stations it falls far short; none of those docking points are found south of the river Aire. It’s equivalent to promising Boris Bikes to London only to put each of the 800 stations north of the river Thames. Whichever town or city north of Sheffield you take as a case study, you’ll reach the same conclusion: the North of England has been throttled by Westminster governments who wilfully turn a blind eye to such evident disparities. HS2 is merely the latest chapter in the chronicles of Northern deprivation: 17,500 jobs were promised to the people of the Northwest through HS2’s construction. They are jobs now lost and never to be realised, much like the vital railway network that was promised to them.

Sadly, the systemic inequality at the heart of our country is not restricted to the glamourous world of public transport, but seeps its way into every corner of British society. The paralysing impact of George Osborne’s austerity regime was doubtless evident nationwide, but it is wrong to deny the disproportionate regional effects that are still felt today. Of the ten cities who suffered the largest budget cuts from 2010 onwards, seven were in the Northeast, Northwest, or Yorkshire. On average northern cities saw a reduction of around 20% in their budget, compared to a 9% average reduction for cities in the South. 

Often the scale of abandonment is obscured within statistics and percentages, but there is a real-world impact that should shame Westminster. Disposable income per head in London is around £12k per annum greater than that of the Northeast, ensuring Britain’s regional inequalities are among the worst of any other comparable developed nation. Westminster’s prejudices have ensured that austerity discriminates, and governments have wilfully cut the North of England off, imposing a disproportionate poverty from which many towns are yet to recover. An amelioration of the North’s situation is highly unlikely, as Rishi Sunak is no standard bearer for redistribution. His pitch over summer 2022 to Conservative Party members was that “he started the work” of taking the money away from “deprived, urban areas.” It takes no idiot to see that the past 10 years have done nothing but exacerbate a systemic regional inequality, of which HS2 is merely a drop in the ocean. 

It is important to note that this is not a partisan issue, but instead a rare site of cross-party unity. Both Labour and the Conservatives campaign on a revolutionary “levelling up” agenda for Northern England, only to abandon it in office. Notwithstanding the work done introducing Sure Start centres across the North, New Labour routinely embraced the Thatcherite supposition that London was the most important part of the UK and ignored the North. New Labour demonstrated contemptuous disrespect; they pandered to Rupert Murdoch’s newspapers despite The Sun’s unjust falsification of the Hillsborough Disaster being a source of immense hurt in Liverpool. Through their continuation of Conservative taxation and spending, New Labour gave succour to London’s buccaneering bankers and boardroom directors whose fallibility was evident in the 2008 financial crisis. By accepting inevitable globalisation New Labour embraced London, but they neglected their responsibility to alleviate the consequences felt in the manufacturing based industrial centres, predominantly in the North. Whilst the decline of traditional manufacturing was arguably made unavoidable by increasing globalisation, Labour’s failure lay in their negligence of the consequences this would have on the North; New Labour did not soften the blow of this transition with the necessary investment. 

This is how Labour’s traditional heartlands have been ignored, and Keir Starmer looks set to maintain this sorry trend. When faced with the question of opposing the scrapping of HS2, Starmer said he couldn’t “commit to reversing” the decision. It is a source of immense intra-party division, with Andy Burnham condemning the Government’s action and by extension, implicitly distancing himself from the views of his party’s leader. In government Labour has perpetuated an economic order that discriminated against the North, and in opposition they have failed to grasp the urgency of the “North-South Chasm” that has opened up in Britain.That, at time of writing, leading Labour party figures are yet to take a unified stand on the matter reflects their flip flopping on the North-South divide. 

The divide between North and South is axiomatic across Britain’s economic systems. The cancellation of HS2 is just one of many failures in the provision of public services that affect each Northerner, an injustice which Londoners will never comprehend. The London bias extends well beyond buses and trains; irrespective of the party in government, Westminster serves only to perpetuate the regional disparities that define, and limit, the opportunities available to people from the North. Many regions are neglected by Westminster, but none is so frequently abandoned as the North of England. The cancellation of HS2 is not the first time that Westminster has failed the North, and I fear it won’t be the last.