ON MONDAY George Osborne, Tatton MP and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, outlined an ambition to create a northern 'supercity' to rival London as a global hub by building HS3, a high speed rail link between Manchester, Leeds and Liverpool.*
By making the North the priority it would show that the commitment to bridging the North/South divide is real. You have to admire the cunning of Osborne in putting the Conservatives ahead of Labour on this.
He was speaking, appropriately enough, at the Museum of Science & Industry, the site in Manchester of the world's oldest passenger railway station. This dates from 1830 and was the eastern terminus of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway - the first inter-city line.
The Chancellor described how he wanted to channel long-term investment into links between northern English cities, which have a combined population of nine million, similar to that of London.
"We need a Northern powerhouse," he said. "Not one city, but a collection of cities - sufficiently close to each other that combined they can take on the world."
Excellent. Lovely. Sadly there was no mention of budget or timescales.
Cynics have said the HS3 idea is beguiling, foxy almost, but is calculated to gain support for the Conservatives before next year's election.
Who cares?
What the Chancellor has done is opened the idea up to other parties. It's up to them to seize this opportunity.
Manchester to Leeds line. Can we get this beyond 30mph please? We are going downhill after all.
Labour, an opposition which seems mealy-mouthed and low on ambition, obsessed with their 'weird' leader and equally obsessed with emptily mouthing the words 'social justice', could be on to something here.
They could grab this 'big idea' and run with it. Leap aboard so to speak.
They've cravenly dithered over committing to HS2, so maybe this is the party's chance to chuck their weight behind HS3 as the next high speed step.
Ed Miliband could announce that Labour want to reverse the timetable and put HS2 behind giving Liverpool, Manchester and Leeds the fast link and all the prestige and opportunities that would bring. Of course this would entail making a forthright and clear policy decision which Ed seems to generally avoid.
The advantages are clear.
By making the North the priority it would show that the commitment to bridging the North/South divide is real. You have to admire the cunning of Osborne in putting the Conservatives ahead of Labour on this.
Labour would also gain brownie points in three traditional metropolitan heartlands linking, as Osborne stated, nine million people. It would be good politics for them.
Another element would be to silence the whinging of NIMBYs (Not In My Back Yard) in the rural bits between London and Birmingham and Birmingham and Manchester. That could be left for another day.
A route from Liverpool to Leeds via Manchester would almost certainly be less controversial and more likely to be universally acclaimed - aside from Green cranks and a few Northern NIMBYs.
The engineering needed to cross the Pennines would mean building long-lasting landmarks associated with a transport system pioneered here - maybe something as beautiful as Norman Foster's Millau viaduct in France. Dreams maybe but who knows?
Millau viaduct
The works would certainly employ thousands.
Then after HS3 we could link Manchester with Birmingham and then Birmingham to London.
In fact, maybe the Conservatives should continue taking the initiative and suggest substituting HS3 for HS2 as the first stage.
Where the national Labour Party sits in this debate is hard to fathom at present. We know the local authority administrations up here in Northland are behind high speed links, but it'd be nice to know where Ed Miliband stood.
He's got an opportunity here to make a grand gesture. He needs one.
*Oddly George Osborne mentioned linking Manchester, Leeds and Liverpool on Monday morning on Radio 4 but apparently concentrated on the Manchester-Leeds connection at the MOSI speech. The latter must have been an oversight as the inclusion of Liverpool would be vital to any such line.
Main illustration at the top of the page from Paul Rogers at Paul Rogers Studio. Click here for the link to the website.
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