So much for Farage caring about tackling the North/South divide.
Labour’s Transport Minister Heidi Alexander has roasted Nigel Farage in the Commons, after the Reform UK leader called for the scrapping of HS2 in its entirety.
Farage it appears is not interested in better transport links or tackling regional equality as he railed against the project. He told the Commons: “I campaigned against this HS2 project ever since 2010 up and down the line, I never believed the original £35bn price tag, furthermore, it would only have benefited rich businessman and driven businesses from the north of England to London.”
Farage added: “Let’s scrap HS2, let’s use the tens of billions of pounds we can save in the next decade, to upgrade railway lines across the entirety of the United Kingdom, to the benefit of many millions and spend the rest on other national priorities in these financially strained times. Surely the time has come to scrap the entirety of the project.”
Alexander replied: “We are not going to be a country that spends over £30bn on rail infrastructure but then never sees a train running on it, we’ve already seen too much waste, I’m interested that he is advocating more we also have significant capacity constraints between Birmingham and London.
“He seems not to want to do anything about that but I think those two great cities in our country deserve a railway fit for the 21st century and I’m just sorry that he doesn’t.”
So much for Farage caring about tackling the North/South divide.
Basit Mahmood is editor of Left Foot Forward
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