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When will the Tories dare hold an election? And should the talked about trillion railway be cut? These are the questions in focus when the British Prime Minister gives a speech today at the party congress in Manchester.
The right-wing Tories have had a grip on power since 2010, but now it is no longer stable at all. The turbulence surrounding leaving the EU and then the leadership battles when Boris Johnson was replaced by Liz Truss who was replaced by Rishi Sunak has cost the party dearly.
According to consensus opinion polls, the Tories now have no chance of retaining power after the next election – and it needs to be held in the next year.
When Sunak gives his big line speech at the party’s congress today, everyone is watching for clues as to when he aims to call the election. Will it be during the spring as usual, or will he try another variant in light of the desperate state of public opinion?
Important pep
And an equally hot issue is HS2. It’s an abbreviation for High Speed 2, meaning the high-speed rail meant to be a new pulse north from London to Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds and, by extension, Scotland. The construction began to be prepared already under the rule of social democratic Labor in the late 00s, and is seen as an important pep signal to the often neglected northern England.
However, the estimated cost of HS2 has rocketed beyond everyone’s worst fears. In 2013, the estimate landed at £37.5 billion. Recently, it is up to just over 100 billion. This corresponds to more than SEK 1,300 billion, would make the project one of the world’s absolute most expensive – and then even the recent inflation has not had time to be factored into the calculations.
Lotless cities
Sunak has already said in the past that the northernmost section, from Manchester to Leeds, will not be completed. Now many expect him to cut the project even further, so that only the London-Birmingham fast track is built at the moment. The cities in the north, Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield and Leeds, will then be completely without a lot – a symbolic message if it were to come precisely in a speech held in Manchester.
Ahead of the speech, the Prime Minister has been stingy with clues.
– It is correct to say that I will not be pushed into hasty decisions about something this important which costs the country tens of billions of pounds, he said the other day to Sky News.