On the Eve of the Conservative Party Conference in Manchester,former Prime Minister Boris Johnson has warned that Mr Sunak would be “deluded” to axe the route and leave Britain saddled with “a total white elephant, the vanity project to end all vanity projects”.
He warned that a further scaling back would be “arepetitious madness”.
In his weekly column for the Daily Mail he writes
Cancel HS2? Cut off the northern legs? We must be out of our minds,” he wrote in his weekly column for the Daily Mail.
“We simply cannot afford to abandon this vision now – to panic, and throw up our hands, and say it is all too difficult.
“This is a pivotal moment, a time when we need to show, as a country, that we still have the requisite guts and ambition.
“If we delay or cut the northern legs, if we truncate HS2 – then we are betraying the north of the country and the whole agenda of levelling up.
Meanwhile the Transport Secretary Mark Harper declined to be drawn on suggestions the Birmingham to Manchester leg of the high-speed route could be axed because of cost concerns during his Media round this morning
Harper told Times Radio that “spades are in the ground” on phase one of HS2, between London and Birmingham, but said he would not comment on “speculation in the media” about the line potentially stopping in the Midlands.
“If the government has anything to say, we’ll say that in the usual way, in due course,” he added.
