by By Andy Bruce
CREWE, England (Reuters) – A major project to help revitalize the railway town of Crewe has been buried under mounds of earth, serving as a grim warning to Britain’s Conservatives and their fight to retain power.
The large construction site in a town center in north-west England was supposed to be transformed into a polished retail and entertainment complex that would serve as a bus terminal and car park was already under construction.
That part of the plan has now been scrapped, with local officials citing the government’s end of the northern section of the High Speed 2 (HS2) rail project as a factor, along with high inflation, falling property values and an expanding housing stock.
“It feels like Crewe is just kind of a dying town. I think HS2 was one of the ways we were going to improve that, and now it’s not going to happen,” said local resident Andy Lewis and waiting patiently for a train at the historic railway station, a regional hub almost two centuries old.
Voters across the north of England played a key role in propelling the Conservatives to a landslide election victory in 2019, buoyed by Boris Johnson’s promises to deliver Brexit dividends and “level up” Britain’s regions, London’s poor cousins to long
More than four years on, the political establishment has shifted and polls show the ruling party is set to lose that support, a reversal that could help put it on course for a national victory for Labour. in a general election expected this year.
Johnson was sacked as prime minister by his own lawmakers for breaches of the COVID lockdown, sparking a bout of chaotic infighting that saw Liz Truss reign for several weeks before she too was forced out and replaced by Rishi Sunak, whose capital itself marked by resignation and rebellion.
The leveling up campaign has since been canceled by the northern axis of the HS2 rail network, a project aimed at better connecting Britain’s cities and economy, in a move decried by former PM Johnson as “the flag of the north of the country. country and the overall equalization agenda”.
Many local businesses and residents hoped the Crewe-to-Manchester spur of HS2 would bring billions of pounds of investment into the town.
“That was our opportunity, really, and I think it’s gone now,” said Paul Colman, chief executive of the region’s South Cheshire Chamber of Commerce.
Sunak canceled the northern leg in September when the estimated costs of the entire HS2 project rose above 100 billion pounds ($126 billion) and the infrastructure watchdog warned there was a fundamental problem with Britain’s ability to undertake such large-scale projects. manage that.
Sunak described it as a tough decision, but one that was driven by the spiraling cost, as well as a drop in passenger numbers following the COVID pandemic. Speaking in the northern town of Accrington in January, he said that 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 sharp points, electrifying rail lines across the north, east, west. And that’s all leveling for me,” a said the prime minister.
However, Crewe Conservative MP Kieran Mullan admitted the loss of the HS2 link was a blow.
“I was disappointed,” he told Reuters. “He had a unique ability to help us with connectivity.”
He said the government was committed to extensive work to revitalize Crewe in light of the cancellation, however.
“I think people realize that leveling up is not an overnight challenge,” he said. “It could be a generational challenge to find some of this long-standing inequality.”
‘BALLA RED’ turns on SUNAK
That could be of limited value to the party in the coming months. The neighboring parliamentary seat of Crewe and Nantwich is likely to go back to Labor at the next election, four separate polling models have predicted over the past year.
Crewe is part of the “Red Wall” of constituencies in the north of England that have traditionally voted Labour, but went Conservative in 2019. They are widely expected to be crucial to the outcome of the election in years. , and the commandments are unhappy for Sunak and his partner.
A YouGov poll last week showed that only 20% of northern voters intended to vote Conservative compared to 37% before Johnson’s landslide victory in the 2019 election.
The government’s failure to deliver leveling is one reason why Red Wall voters are abandoning the Conservatives, according to a poll published in November by the advocacy group More in Common, which researches the polarization of society. The issue was ranked fourth, behind illegal immigration, health service failures and government competence.
Nationally, Sunak’s Conservatives have averaged almost 20 points behind the Labor Party in opinion polls over the past few months and are on track to lose more than half of their 349 parliamentary seats, according to a polling analysis website Calculus Elections.
LONDON FOR THE PART?
Britain is still a divided nation.
London’s share of the national economy has risen by over 3 percentage points since 2000 to 24%, and no other region in Britain has increased its share over the same period, according to official data.
Comparable data from the EU statistical agency Eurostat shows much less polarization between regions in Germany and France.
Investment data shows the gap.
Public infrastructure spending in London between 2010 and 2021 was £4,763 per person, adjusted for inflation, official data shows. 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 areas – is at the very edge among OECD economies,” said Diane Coyle, professor of economics at Cambridge University.
“Even a country like France, which is politically highly centralized, has a system where the distribution of funding is constitutionally guaranteed,” she said.
“So we stand out.”
Over the past 20 years, more political power has flowed to the regions – including the Scottish and Welsh parliaments and elected city-region mayors – but that devolution now needed to include economic levers to control spending. infrastructure, Coyle added.
‘Board and Abandoned’
HS2, once Europe’s biggest infrastructure project, has been halved since the Conservatives won a landslide in 2019. The line originally linked London with the northern cities of Manchester and Leeds, but will now end at Birmingham, around 100 miles (161 km) north of London.
Even after construction of the shortened HS2, France, Germany, Italy and Spain will continue to lag behind in terms of dedicated high-speed rail capacity, according to OECD data.
Labor leader Keir Starmer has said that, if elected, he will not revive the northern section of HS2, describing the budget as “blown” and citing contracts already being cancelled. Instead, he says he would stick with Sunak’s Northern Powerhouse Rail plan to improve rail links from east to north-west.
Labor also promises to devolve more power from Westminster, giving local leaders economic autonomy.
This could be cold comfort for Crewe.
Business leaders stress the town’s continued advantages as a well-connected center for distribution and manufacturing, although they admit the loss of HS2 is a major blow.
Mark Haase, chief executive of SG World, whose operations in Crewe include printing, manufacturing and software development, said the town was a “fantastic area” for business.
The company may however have 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 rest of northern England and Scotland .
Meanwhile, the construction site that was supposed to be a retail and entertainment center was downgraded for temporary use, possibly as a go-kart track or trampoline park.
Mullan, the Conservative MP for Crewe, said he was grateful people were frustrated when the retail plans were scrapped.
“But really that means in the short term, we can probably do something with the space,” he said. “This space has been boarded up and abandoned which I think has dragged down the town center for a long time.”
(Reporting by Andy Bruce; Graphics by Sumanta Sen; Editing by William Schomberg and Pravin Char)
