North rail betrayal is soap opera as long as TV’s Coronation Street – The Yorkshire Post says

IT speaks volumes about the lack of investment in the North’s antiquated rail network that this saga is, in the words of Tory MP Andrew Jones, almost as long-running as ITV’s Coronation Street as it marked its 60th anniversary last night.
Harrogate MP Andrew Jones was a Rail Minister in Theresa May's government.Harrogate MP Andrew Jones was a Rail Minister in Theresa May's government.
Harrogate MP Andrew Jones was a Rail Minister in Theresa May's government.

Yet the fact that the normally loyal Harrogate MP felt obliged to make this damning comparison at Prime Minister’s Questions was a reminder about the extent to which this issue has become a political soap opera with as many plot lines, and false dawns, as Ken Barlow’s tangled life on Corrie’s famous Weatherfield cobbles.

After all, Mr Jones served briefly as a Rail Minister in Theresa May’s government and clearly knows, from first-hand experience, that maximum pressure needs to be maintained to ensure that Boris Johnson implements the election promises which the public entrusted him to deliver a year ago. At least he elicited a commitment on the record from the PM that he is still behind the eastern leg of HS2 to Sheffield and Leeds; that he wants to see Northern Powerhouse Rail delivered and that the National Infrastructure Commission is looking at how to maximise the economic benefits of high-speed rail here.

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But what the Prime Minister did not do is accept the suggestion from Mr Jones that it would be in the national – and public – interest for work on HS2 to begin in the North and help assuage the scheme’s critics

This was Boris Johnson returning to 10 Downing Street after Prime Minister's Questions.This was Boris Johnson returning to 10 Downing Street after Prime Minister's Questions.
This was Boris Johnson returning to 10 Downing Street after Prime Minister's Questions.

This was an oversight which, like many TV plot lines, failed to learn from history. HS2 might command far more confidence, even now, if David Cameron had heeded calls by Kris Hopkins, the then Keighley MP, in 2012 to begin construction in Yorkshire. Let’s hope Britain does not have to wait until Coronation Street’s centenary for the high-speed rail to reach both sides of the Pennines – after all it’s only taken 40 years, a lifetime in Corrie land, to scrap the Pacer trains.

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