For the disinterested observer it must be fascinating to watch the lurches in policy that have taken place in Britain as one faction of the Conservative Party or another has seized control of the large majority they were granted by the first past the post electoral system. Each new minister who took office seems to have delighted in tweaking the tail of the previous one by reversing policy on their pet projects.
This has produced a chaotic schizophrenia of policies that has left anyone struggling to run a public service confused and demoralised. What is the point of trying to implement a policy if you are not sure that it will still be in place after the next minister resigns?
The people of Britain are, of course, not disinterested observers. We are directly affected by the impact of the wild swings between conflicting plans.
Rail services in Bradford
That is particularly evident in Bradford. For more than a century Bradford’s development has been held back by having the worst rail connections of any major city in Britain. Over half a million people live in Bradford. They have no direct rail link to London and two sad stations that you can’t get a train between.
The few rare services that claim to be direct make a huge loop around Leeds that adds half an hour to the journey. The services to nearby Manchester trundle along a slow rickety line across the Pennine. It is only 29 miles between the two cities and that creates a huge potential for employment opportunities. It takes an hour to get there by train. Which doesn’t.
Then levelling up became an important slogan for the Conservatives. At first the only planned benefit for Bradford rail passengers was that they had the opportunity to watch from the sidelines as the hugely expensive HS2 project sucked all the available money into improving the speed of an already rapid service between Leeds and London.
Northern Powerhouse Rail
Then George Osborne started talking about creating a Northern Powerhouse and became keen on creating a fast and reliable service from Liverpool to Hull via Bradford. Suddenly there was the possibility that the people of Bradford and the entire north would get a seriously transformational investment project.
Instead of having to travel to London to get access to vibrant job opportunities people could have stayed local and accessed a wide variety of opportunities. Employers could have forged ahead knowing that they had access to the massive talent pool that has always come out of northern schools, colleges and universities but not always stayed local. The people of Bradford were promised rapid links to Leeds and Manchester and genuine hope of economic revival.
Unfortunately, Osborne proved better at talking about this idea than at financing it and the idea made little progress. Then the 2019 election campaign came along and Boris Johnson needed to promise something that played well in the north. The scheme became a prominent part of the campaign and helped Johnson’s version of the Conservatives to win significant numbers of seats in deprived northern areas. The project was on.
We all now know the value of a Johnson promise. After the election he changed his mind. In June 2021 he decided that he didn’t really mean it and Bradford could cope with its existing stations and a bit of upgrading on existing lines. The project was off.
Bradford’s short-lived hopes for Northern Powerhouse
That was before Liz Truss came along. She announced with great confidence that she was reversing this policy and Bradford would indeed get its brand-new station and the full length of the line between Liverpool and Hull would be built. It was one of the very rare beacons of light in the dark days of incompetence that dominated her version of Conservative government. Even more than it dominated all the other versions. The project was firmly back on again.
There was just one teeny weeny problem. She hadn’t bothered to work out how she was going to pay for this. Or for any of her other policies. Within days she had crashed the economy, driven up interest rates, and exposed millions to higher mortgage and rent costs.
Rishi Sunak then came in. A man who represents a Yorkshire seat and so might be expected to favour a practical project designed to level up the north. Instead, his new government immediately proceeded to scrap it. The Northern Powerhouse project was off again.
Levelling down for Bradford
That is where things currently sit. The new minister apparently thinks that cancelling a new Bradford station is no big deal and there is little point in blasting new tunnels through the Pennines. The good people of Bradford have every right to disagree. Councillor Matt Edwards who represents Tong and is the Green Party national spokesperson on transport expressed the outrage clearly.
The leader of Bradford City Council, Susan Hinchcliffe, put it this way:
“We’ve got a plan for clean growth in Bradford and it includes a new station on an electrified line which connects us better to the rest of the North of England.
“I fail to see why any rational Government, interested in promoting growth, wouldn’t be interested in working with Bradford to deliver this plan which would provide for 27,000 jobs and a £3 billion annual uplift to the economy”
Austerity bites, again
Despite the huge need for major economic development in Bradford the chances of another reversal of policy are low. This side of a general election. The current incarnation of the Conservative Party is busy preaching the need for caution and responsibility. Yet they voted for the reckless and irresponsible policies that caused the problems in the first place.
After the free-market banking collapse in 2008 a huge programme of austerity was inflicted on people who had played no part in causing that crash whilst those who did got away with keeping their bonus money. Now the nation is facing another vicious programme of austerity being inflicted on people who didn’t cause an economic crisis by the people who did.
There is only one crumb of comfort in all this. Anyone in Bradford who voted for the Conservatives because they believed in levelling up is extremely unlikely to do so again. If there is any justice, then we will see the back of the party that lurched between these policies for a very long time to come.
