There’s good news for the South of England today, both for drivers and rail passengers.
The Lower Thames Crossing has been given the go-ahead to link Kent and Essex, and Chiltern Railways will run trains between Oxford and Milton Keynes for the first time in 60 years.
The Lower Thames Crossing will be Britain’s biggest single planned road building project, and will total over 14 miles of roads, including the tunnel beneath the Thames.
Two 2.6-mile tunnels under the river will carry three lanes of traffic each way, with a 70mph speed limit. It will link the M25 to Channel port traffic, and relieve pressure on the Dartford Tunnel.
Location of the proposed Lower Thames Crossing between Kent and Sussex
PA
Lower Thames Crossing proposed route
PA
It’s expected to cost between £9-16billion (some of it privately funded), and create up to 22,000 jobs.
And from later this year, Chiltern Railways will run trains between Oxford and Milton Keynes, as part of the Government’s Oxford-Cambridge Growth Corridor.
Brilliant news for the South, but it strikes me again, as it did weeks ago when Chancellor Rachel Reeves unveiled her plans for growth with a surge of infrastructure investments, that it is all about London and the South-East of England.
The most prosperous area of the country and the area where our otherwise lacklustre productivity is already high.
Map shows most/least deprived areas of the UK
OCSI (Oxford Consultants for Social Inclusion)
In January, Rachel Reeves announced a third runway at Heathrow, and an expanded Terminal 5, new runways at Gatwick and Luton, and the Oxford-Cambridge Growth Corridor.
And for the North?
Home of 16 million people and some of our greatest cities?
The re-opening of an airport at Doncaster and a new football stadium for Old Trafford in Manchester.
Boris Johnson won that 80-seat majority back in 2019 on “Get Brexit Done”, yes, but also on the promise of “levelling up” the many parts of the UK left behind.
Looking at a map of deprivation from the OCSI (Oxford Consultants for Social Inclusion), the hardest done-by areas are in the North, the South-West and coastal regions.
Highlighted colour shows area getting the most investment in transport/infrastructure
Katherine Forster/OCSI
So basically, the Government’s giving a massive boost to the part of the country already doing pretty well.
They say that the benefits will be felt across the whole country.
I was sent to Scunthorpe a few weeks ago for an announcement about Heathrow.
Apparently, the improvements to Terminal 5, which will begin this year, will use British Steel where possible. Which is where Scunthorpe comes in.
And to Preston for the Convention of the North, where Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham told me that increased devolution would help.
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS:
Keir Starmer on a defence visit to a shipbuilding firm in Liverpool where he stressed that our increase in defence spending would lead to more jobs in places like Wirral and Barrow-In-Furness
PA
And to Liverpool with the Prime Minister on a defence visit to a shipbuilding firm there, as he stressed that our increase in defence spending would lead to more jobs in places like Wirral and Barrow-In-Furness.
This is all to be welcomed, of course.
But as a woman from Yorkshire there just seems to me to be a pattern.
London and the South get great transport and investment.
The North gets promises and pledges from Government after Government.
And then they are let down.
George Osborne talked of a Northern Powerhouse and high-speed rail from Liverpool through Leeds to Hull.
It’s not happening, of course.
HS2 was to go in a Y shape to Leeds and Manchester - both legs were axed
PA
HS2 was to go in a Y shape to Leeds and Manchester.
First, they axed the Leeds leg. Then the then-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak stood in a former railway station in Manchester to tell the city that HS2 would stop at Birmingham.
But the South gets fast rail from London to Birmingham, along with £100million bat tunnels and deep cuttings so locals don’t have to look at a railway line.
And London has the new Elizabeth Line.
While rail journey times between Leeds and Manchester have barely budged in decades.
In 2018, there was talk of a tunnel through the Pennines between Yorkshire and Lancashire.
We don’t hear that any more.
Artist's impression image issued by HS2 of the Sheephouse Wood bat protection structure which will run for around one kilometre (0.6 miles) alongside the wood, creating a barrier allowing bats to cross above the high-speed HS2 railway without being affected by passing trains
PA
People in the north have heard it all before.
Some in Labour are well aware of this neglect of the north.
Jo White, MP for Bassetlaw, is one of around 40 Labour MPs in the Red Wall Caucus who represent previously industrial areas of the North and the Midlands.
She admits that after Reeves’s speech in January: “There was a level of anger from my red wall colleagues.”
She is now calling for a Red Wall cabinet minister to be brought in at the next reshuffle.
Given the Chancellor is MP for Leeds West and Pudsey, this seeming blind spot for the North is even more surprising.
The Tories lost the Red Wall largely because people felt they hadn’t delivered their promised “levelling up”.
Those voters have gone back to Labour.
Labour has a chance to deliver for the North.
If they don’t seize it, they’ll be punished at the polls too.
