TORY politicians are obsessed with the idea of winning the general election up ’ere by throwing trains at it. After his announcement in Birmingham last year of a high-speed rail link from London to Leeds, William Hague flogged up to Bradford the other day to announce an all-singing, all-dancing commission on transport in the north.
Chaired by Peter Mileham, former president of the British Chambers of Commerce (but, be it noted, born in Scarborough, jewel of the Yorkshire riviera) this body will spend the next eight months criss-crossing the region by road, rail, sea and air “to find out what needs to be done to beat crippling congestion”. And God help them, say I.
It will then report to young Baldilocks, and he and Shadow Transport Secretary Theresa Villiers will decide which recommendations should figure in the Conservative Party manifesto – once approved by David Cameron, anyway. But there is a firm commitment to building a high-speed railway line between London and Leeds. Hague said so himself in the Yorkshire Post, so it must be true.
He claims it will free up space on existing lines and carriages, and not just offer high-speed trains between the capital and the financial capital of the north, but also improve existing links between other towns and cities. The proposal for the new line is “fully costed, with a realistic timetable, and ready under a future Conservative government”.
But is it? I spoke to a smart young lady at Conservative Central Office and asked her where this new line would go. The exchange went something like this. “Oh, there’s nothing new in this. It was all announced in Birmingham last year.” “Yes, I know that. I was there. But still, do you know where it will go? Will it be a brand new line, or a new service on existing tracks, because there are obvious cost differences?” “Oh, it’s been fully costed.” “But”, I persisted, “where will it go?” “Erm, I’ll get back to you.”
Politics is a cruel game – and never more so than when you’re teasing the bright young gels of Tory Central Office. But someone has to do it, and it fills in a quiet afternoon in God’s own county when the snow is on the ground and it’s just that bit too cold to walk to the Olde White Bear (own brew bitter, £1.95).
I mean, it’s all very well Hague the vague promising a new line, but simply upgrading the West Coast Main Line took years and cost upwards of £10 billion. And the trackbed was already in place. There was no need for Heathrow-style compulsory purchase orders, demolition of homes or destruction of the rural environment.
Apart from the gigantic bill – falling on taxpayers already floundering in the biggest public debt in living memory – can you imagine what the green nutters will say about a new iron way cutting a swathe through half of England? Much worse, what they might do. There could be endless opportunities for sabotage. Dig out the white overalls, doomies.
Half an hour later, Ms Central-Office emailed a copy of Hague’s speech to the Birmingham conference, which did indeed promise a high-speed link – from St Pancras to Birmingham. And Manchester. And, oh yes, Leeds. It would get us up ’ere faster than you could listen to his speech. Construction would begin in 2015, and finish by 2027. Hang on a minute, this isn’t a London-Leeds link? It’s a line to Brum and Manchester, with a spur across the Pennines, a mountain barrier not exactly suited to high speed, except in the air.
More in entertainment than expectation, I asked the Tories if they had an actual plan with a specific route, not least because the Hague line (“a high speed rail line between London and Leeds”, he promised in the Yorkshire Post, remember) sounds suspiciously similar to the route proposed by Transport Secretary Geoff Hoon as a sop for concreting over west London with Heathrow Airport’s third runway.
And the likelihood of anyone experiencing high speed on BuffRail is about as great as Bob Crow taking a peerage from Cameron.
Anyway, this time the wait for a definitive view from Central Office took longer. Never run on time, these politicians. But lo and behold, a (male) Tory transport expert finally confirmed that it would be just as I surmised, a line to the Midlands and Lancashire with an extension to Leeds operational some 30 years hence (my astounded italics). Even then, it will only shave an estimated 28 minutes off the current journey time. All that brass to get Hague into work half an hour earlier.
If this is a genuine high-speed London to Leeds link, I am a Beyer Garratt.
