By Andy Bruce
CREWE, England (Reuters) – A major project to help revitalize the railway town of Crewe, buried under mounds of earth, is serving as a somber warning to Britain’s Conservatives and their fight to retain power.
The massive building site in the center of the town in northwestern England was due to be transformed into a flashy retail and entertainment complex that would crown a bus terminal and car park already under construction.
This part of the plan has been stalled after local officials cited the government’s scrapping of the northern leg of the High Speed 2 (HS2) rail project as a factor, along with high inflation, falling property values and strain on households.
“It looks like Crewe is a dying town. I think HS2 was one of the ways to improve that and now that’s not going to happen,” local resident Andy Lewis said as he waited patiently for the train. historic railway station, a regional hub for almost two centuries.
Voters in northern England were instrumental in propelling the Conservatives to a resounding election victory in 2019, inspired by Boris Johnson’s promise to deliver the dividends of Brexit and “fix” the poor cousins in London’s long-held areas of Britain.
Over four years the political landscape has changed and opinion polls show that the ruling party is losing that support; This reversal could help Labor avoid a major national defeat in the general election expected this year.
Johnson was sacked as prime minister by his own MPs over coronavirus lockdown breaches, triggering a chaotic infighting that saw Liz Truss reign for several weeks before he himself was sacked and replaced by Rishi Sunak, whose own premiership was marked by : resignations and rebellions.
The leveling effort has since been hampered by the axing of the northern leg of the HS2 rail network, a project aimed at better connecting Britain’s cities and economy; This move was described by former Prime Minister Johnson as “betraying the north of England”. country and the whole leveling up agenda”.
Many local businesses and residents hoped the HS2 push from Crewe to Manchester would bring billions of pounds of investment to the city.
“This was a real opportunity for us and I think it’s now gone,” said Paul Colman, chief executive of the district’s South Cheshire Chambers of Commerce.
The northern leg was canceled by Sunak in September as estimated costs for the overall HS2 project rose to more than 100 billion pounds ($126 billion) and the infrastructure watchdog warned there was a fundamental problem in Britain’s ability to manage such major projects.
Sunak described it as a difficult decision, but it was stated that this decision was due to rising costs and a decrease in passenger numbers following the COVID outbreak. Speaking in the northern town of Accrington in January, he said all the money saved by canceling the northern leg would be reinvested across the country.
“Fixing potholes, capping bus fares at two pounds, improving your local roads, dealing with pain points, electrifying railway lines in the north, east and west. And that’s all leveling up for me,” the Prime Minister added.
However, Crewe’s Conservative MP Kieran Mullan admitted the loss of the HS2 link was a blow.
“I’m disappointed,” he told Reuters. “It had special potential to help us when it came to connectivity.”
But he said the government was committed to comprehensive work to revitalize Crewe in light of the cancellation.
“I think people are actually realizing that leveling up isn’t an overnight challenge,” he added. “Eliminating some of this long-standing inequality could be a generational challenge.”
‘RED WALL’ TURNED THE ALTAR
This may be of limited value to the party in the coming months. The parliamentary seat of Crewe and neighboring Nantwich is likely to swing to Labor at the next election, as predicted by four separate poll models last year.
Crewe is part of the “Red Wall” of constituencies in the north of England that have traditionally voted Labour, but swung towards the Conservatives in 2019. These are expected to be vital to the outcome of this year’s elections. The omens are not encouraging for the altar and his party.
A YouGov poll last week showed only 20% of voters in the north planned to vote Conservative; this was down from 37% before Johnson’s landslide victory in 2019.
The government’s perceived failure to equalize is one reason why Red Wall voters are abandoning the Conservatives, according to polling published in November by advocacy group More in Common, which investigates polarization in society. The problem ranked fourth, behind illegal immigration, health care failures and government incompetence.
Nationally, Sunak’s Conservatives are an average of almost 20 points behind Labor in opinion polls over the past few months and are on track to lose more than half of their 349 seats in parliament, according to poll analysis website Electoral Calculus.
LONDON AGAINST THE OTHERS?
Britain remains a divided nation.
According to official data, London’s share of the national economy has increased by over 3 percentage points to 24 percent since 2000; No other part of Britain increased its share over the same period.
Comparable data from the EU statistical agency Eurostat shows much less polarization between regions in Germany and France.
Investment data shows the difference.
According to official data, public infrastructure spending in London between 2010 and 2021 totaled £4,763 per person when adjusted for inflation. That’s 63% more than the average outside the capital, according to Reuters calculations.
“The gap between London and the rest of the UK, and particularly poorer regions, is at its most extreme among OECD economies,” said Diane Coyle, professor of economics at the University of Cambridge.
“Even in a highly politically centralized country like France, they have a system where funding is constitutionally guaranteed,” he said.
“So we stand out.”
Coyle added that more political power had flowed to the regions (including the Scottish and Welsh parliaments and elected city-region mayors) over the past 20 years, but that devolution must now also include economic levers such as control over infrastructure spending.
‘LOAD LOADED AND ABANDONED’
HS2, once billed as Europe’s biggest infrastructure project, has been halved since the Conservatives’ landslide victory in 2019. Originally the line was to connect London with the northern cities of Manchester and Leeds, but will now terminate in Birmingham, approximately 100 miles (161 km) north of London.
Even after the construction of the shortened HS2, the UK will remain several orders of magnitude behind France, Germany, Italy and Spain in terms of high-speed rail line capacity, according to OECD data.
Labor leader Keir Starmer said he would not revive the northern leg of HS2 if elected, describing the budget as a “shock” and citing the fact contracts were already being cancelled. Instead, he says he will stick to Sunak’s Northern Powerhouse Rail plan to improve east-to-west rail links in the north.
Labor is also promising to transfer more power from Westminster by giving local leaders greater economic autonomy.
This may come as cold comfort for Crewe.
Business leaders highlight the town’s continuing advantages as a well-connected hub for distribution and manufacturing, but admit the loss of HS2 is a major blow.
Mark Haase, managing director of SG World, which has operations in Crewe including printing, manufacturing and software development, said the town was a “great area” for business.
He added that the company may need to look further afield for new business opportunities as the downsizing of HS2 will make it more difficult to further improve supply chains between Crewe, the north of England and Scotland.
Meanwhile, the construction site that was supposed to become a shopping and entertainment center has been scaled down for temporary use, perhaps as a go-kart track or trampoline park.
Mullan, the Conservative MP for Crewe, said he appreciated people being disappointed that their retail plans had been cancelled.
“But actually it means we can probably do something with the space in the short term,” he added. “I think what made the city center collapse for so long was that this area was boarded up and abandoned.”
(Reporting by Andy Bruce; Graphics by Sumanta Sen; Editing by William Schomberg and Pravin Char)