In office
Norman Lamont’s parting shot that the “government is in office but not in power” really deserves dusting off and using again.
Yesterday the Pop Cons launched their version of the Tory party, which was a very unattractive vision. Basically it is the “Liz Truss was right” branch of Conservatism, claiming once again that a lurch to the right means they occupy the central ground.
But let us assume that anyone wishing to be led by Ms Truss is either suffering from really serious memory loss or has a death wish and look at the real state of the nation.
HS2 is a total mess, the House of Commons has been investigating its prospects and is not impressed. It seems the journey from London to Birmingham will quite possibly be slower than the current trip. That the prospects of finding private equity to build a new station in central London and pay for its to be linked to HS2 is highly unlikely and to rub salt in the wounds says “Crucially, the Department [for Transport] does not yet understand how HS2 will operate as a functioning railway following recent changes.”
At a total cost of £67 billion and counting the government have managed to build a white elephant but one with so many tunnels that it won’t be visible to Tory voters on its route. The Tory government having spent billions buying off its own back benchers, and then abandoning the only rationale for HS2, linking the North with the capital.
The ONS recently published a map of relative productivity in the UK, follow this link https://www.ons.gov.uk/visualisations/dvc2847/fig2/index.html and you are hard pushed to find Manchester or Birmingham on it, they don’t stand out as areas of high productivity at all and they really should.
The only internationally competitive parts of the country are London and the Thames valley, that is the parts of the country well connected with the capital.
It says all you need to know about what the government has done in abandoning and mismanaging HS2, I cannot see how we will ever get another chance to put this right.
The money committed to the project is being spent on filling pot holes in London’s Tory suburbs. The land is being sold off, the government does not have the money to start again, it claims it does not even have the money to get HS2 to the centre of London.
Recommitting to getting High Speed rail to London let alone Leeds or Manchester would take huge amounts of political capital, let alone actual cash.
Meanwhile the Tory party is more interested in claiming that any and all problems in the last 14 years are down to a Woke bubble that is subverting the elected government. It is terrifying to think what lengths they would go to to destroy their imaginary enemies if given the chance.
Frankly everything wrong in the last 14 years is more easily explained by gross incompetence and uncaring ideologically driven fantasies.
HS2 was not killed off by human rights or left leaning judges, but by politicians incapable of governing.
Economics, trade and Brexit, not necessarily in that order but the dog always comes first.
By Jonty Bloom Media
I agree with every word. The electorate is finally realising that it's time to remove the lunatics who have taken over the asylum, but I fear they will expect quick fixes to disasters that either can't be reasonably rectified or will take years.
Incapable of making a decision and sticking to it. A generation of incompetents who only respond to vox pop and polls