Rishi Sunak dodged 14 questions about HS2 - he needs to come clean at the Tory conference in Manchester

The Prime Minister was on the traditional local radio media round ahead of the Conservative Party conference which starts on Sunday … in Manchester. And unsurprisingly he faced questions about the future of HS2.

Sunak did everything he could to avoid answering. He repeatedly said there are “spades in the ground” on the London to Birmingham section, and continually told the presenters that making sure roads are free of potholes is “also important to your listeners”.

At one point Anna Jameson on BBC Radio Manchester got exasperated: “We’re not talking about potholes, the main story right now across the country is people want to know about the future of HS2 and still now you can’t give me a yes or no.” 

To this Sunak just said “the vast majority of the journeys that people make are in their cars”. I imagine more people would use trains if - I don’t know - there was a high speed rail link …

What all this obfuscation has made clear, is that Sunak has already made his mind up about cancelling the Manchester leg of the HS2. A project that was supposed to connect Manchester and Leeds up to London and Birmingham with 250 mph trains, will now likely cost more than £100bn to run trains between Birmingham and a west London suburb in the capital. So much for levelling up.

There have already been reports that Sunak is “alarmed” by the costs of the project, and Cabinet members have been cagey for days as to whether the Manchester leg will go ahead.

It seems the only thing stopping him from announcing the northern section won’t go ahead is the bad publicity of doing it ahead of the Tories’ conference in Manchester. Instead, it appears, Sunak will spend the entire conference avoiding the question, before confirming it's axed when he’s safely back in London far away from straight-talking northerners.

And while it would look terrible to announce it now, in my mind this is even worse. Voters and taxpayers deserve honesty over one of the country’s biggest infrastructure projects, when the Conservatives were elected in 2019, with a swathe of northern England seats, on a platform of levelling up the country. Not for the PM to pretend everything is fine when he’s in Manchester, and then wield the axe back in Downing Street.

Manchester mayor Andy Burnham said that if the line is cancelled it would be a “damning indictment" of the government's focus on the South. Earlier this week, he told Sky News: “[HS2] was in the 2019 Conservative manifesto, the 2017 and the 2015 manifesto too. We have had this promise repeatedly and to pull the plug in this way just says something about the way people think they can treat the north of England, about the way they run this country.”

Rishi Sunak, let’s not forget, has not been elected by anyone to become Prime Minister - not voters or even Tory members (as Liz Truss was). So after taking an axe to net zero measures, Sunak now looks likely to go after HS2 - which as Burnham points out was in the Tory manifesto in 2019.

Sunak said this week: “We’re absolutely committed to levelling up and spreading opportunity around the country, not just in the North but in the Midlands, in all other regions of our fantastic country.” Well actions speak louder the words Rishi.

The government recently awarded a new long-term contract to Avanti West Coast, despite it being the country’s least punctual train operator, according to the Office of Rail and Road, with fewer than half of services running on time from April to June. 

Travelling to Birmingham for work on the same day is impossible, Mancunians say, due to the unreliability of train services. Perhaps this is affecting the economy’s sluggish growth.

While a recent report from the Institute for Fiscal Studies found social mobility is harder now than at any point in the past 50 years, with the North particularly badly affected.

Everyone agrees HS2 has become a mess - but what’s the point in a slightly faster rail link between Birmingham and west London? If the government is going to spend £100bn of taxpayer money on it, Sunak may as well connect up Manchester and solve one of the country’s major infrastructure issues.

But if Sunak is going to cancel it - he needs to front up. As Anna Jameson said, “straight talking people in the north” deserve a straight talking Prime Minister.