MANCHESTER, England (AP) — Battling dismal polls and growing doubts, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak On Wednesday he urged skeptical voters, and his own Conservative Party: “Keep me in office and I will offer you changes.”
In his first (and possibly last) speech as leader at the party’s annual conference ahead of the election due in 2024, Sunak said he is not afraid to make tough decisions and big decisions that will deliver “long-term success” rather than “a short-term success.” advantage.”
But one of his big decisions has divided the party and threatens to derail his agenda: scrapping much of an ambitious but overbudgeted high-speed rail line planned to link London and Manchester.
Sunak said he would cancel the rest of the HS2 project in conflict because its costs have doubled and “the facts have changed.”
“The economic case has been greatly weakened by changes in business travel post-COVID,” he said, arguing that continuing would be an “abdication of leadership.”
Some Conservatives said the decision was a bad decision and that doing so at a conference in Manchester was disastrous.
Andy Street, the Conservative mayor of the West Midlands, called it “an incredible political blunder” that would leave the party’s opponents saying “the Conservatives have come to Manchester to attack the North.”
the besieged High speed 2 The railway, once considered Europe’s largest infrastructure project, was intended to reduce travel times and increase capacity between London, the central English city of Birmingham, and the northern cities of Manchester and Leeds. , with state-of-the-art 250 mph (400 kph). trains.
Billed as a key part of the government’s plans to level up the country by redistributing jobs and investment from the prosperous south of England to the poorer north, its cost was estimated at £33bn in 2011 but has soared. to more than 100 billion pounds ($122 billion) by some estimates. The Conservative government cut the Manchester-Leeds section in 2021, after the coronavirus pandemic halted train travel. Passenger numbers in the UK have recovered, but are only around 80% of pre-pandemic levels.
Sunak said the high-speed line will end in Birmingham, 160 kilometers (100 miles) from London, rather than further north in Manchester. He said that would free up 36 billion pounds ($44 billion) for new road and rail projects in the Midlands and the North.
Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham, a member of the opposition Labor Party, said the decision sends a message that “we can’t do big, difficult things anymore, and I don’t think that reflects well on Britain.”
“I just don’t think it’s fair to the people of Greater Manchester to do this,” he said.
Jack Brereton, a Conservative MP from the Midlands, said HS2 welcomed the move to truncate the line, saying “we can reinvest that money into plans that will actually achieve that leveling up in the Midlands and the North”.
Sunak is trying to persuade voters that a party in power for 13 years deserves another term. In recent weeks he has announced populist measures, such as Slowing measures to phase out fossil fuels – designed to win back voters who have rejected the Conservatives over the stagnation of the British economy, the cost of living crisis and waves of strikes, including one on Wednesday by train drivers that disrupted the travel plans of some participants of the conference.
Like many conservatives, he invoked the spirit of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, whose free-market policies transformed Britain in the 1980s, at great cost to working-class communities. Sunak suggested he was Thatcher’s political heir, and not the other five Conservative prime ministers since.
“We’ve had 30 years of a political system that incentivizes the easy decision, not the right one – 30 years of vested interests hindering change,” Sunak said.
Sunak took office just under a year after his predecessor Liz Truss alarmed the financial markets and shook up the economy with a plan for unfunded tax cuts. He lasted only 49 days in power. Before that, Sunak was Treasury chief under Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who resigned amid multiple ethics scandals.
He disappointed some party members by ruling out tax cuts, at least this year, saying: “The best tax cut we can give now is to halve inflation and ease the cost of living.” UK inflation hits 40-year high from 11.1% a year ago and is now just below 7%.
Opinion polls suggest voters are tired of the Conservatives and their agitation, putting the center-left opposition Labor Party 15 to 20 points ahead.
Sunak’s rivals are already jostling for position in a party leadership contest that could follow election defeat. Minister of the Interior, Suella Braverman I used it conference speech to appeal to the authoritarian wing of the party, which defends law and order, advocating for stricter curbs on migration and a war against the protection of human rights and “woke” social values.
The atmosphere at the conference was subdued: “There is no enthusiasm,” one delegate lamented, as many in the party contemplate the possibility of losing power.
Sunak acknowledged that people feel “an exhaustion with politics.”
“Our political system is too focused on short-term advantages, not long-term success,” he said. “Politicians spent more time campaigning for change than actually achieving it. …I won’t be like that. Our mission is to fundamentally change our country. “
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