Govt announces suspiciously HS2-like train between Birmingham and Manchester

The government will build a new rail link between Birmingham and Manchester, according to reports. The plans will be announced Wednesday. The project echoes the disastrous plan to build HS2, a new line to connect the north and south of the country.

The original project ran into massive delays and overspending. Tory chancellor George Osborne came up with the plan in 2014. And it went the way of most Tory plans in that era…

The government will also announce a new rail network for the north of England.

The BBC said there would be:

new and improved rail links across the North of England in a scheme known as Northern Powerhouse Rail (NPR).

The keystone of the entire plan will be:

A new rail line between Liverpool and Manchester is seen a central piece of the overall Northern Powerhouse rail project, which is aimed at cutting travel times between northern cities and towns as well as boosting the UK economy outside of London.

Both plans are set to be announced on 14 January 2026. Yet the spectre of HS2 looms large… Can Starmer do better? Don’t hold your breath.

Learned anything from HS2? No? Oh well, have another crack

The BBC said that insiders had told them:

an extended review process of the project was under way in a bid to avoid mistakes made with HS2, which has been dogged by problems and costly delays.

HS2 is currently tens of billions of pounds over budget and around a decade behind schedule.

The BBC says that £100bn was spent “135 miles of railway”. Great effort, lads. It’s not like that money could have gone on something useful.

And when has a review ever steered a project wrong?

Overblown vanity project

In February 2024, campaigners from Stop HS2 said the project was so overblown it should be binned altogether. The group’s chair Penny Gaines said:

With just a rump of the overblown HS2 vanity project left, it is no surprise that the remaining plan offers the taxpayer very poor value of money.

She added:

HS2 should be cancelled in its entirety as soon as possible.

Not even MPs were happy. The powerful Public Accounts Committee were also scathing in their own February 2024 report:

Cost overruns and delays have been a constant problem throughout the whole HS2 project. The estimated cost of the completion of Phase 1 with inflation range as high as £67bn.

Perhaps the Starmer regime will pull the whole project out of the bag. But let’s be honest, the Red Tories don’t seem much more competent than the Blue Tories on the evidence of their first year or so in power…

Guess it’s going to be rubbish trains forever. We can’t wait to find out!

Featured image via the Canary