London: Nigel Farage has only four members of Parliament and may have to wait until 2029 to have a shot at being prime minister, but his Reform UK is already trying to steer investors away from projects that don’t fit its populist agenda.
Deputy Reform leader Richard Tice has pledged to scrap high-speed rail projects backed by the Labour government if the insurgent political party is able to convert its commanding poll lead into an electoral victory four years from now.
Tice wrote in the forward of a report to be published yesterday by the right-leaning Policy Exchange think tank that Reform would block the so-called Northern Powerhouse Rail initiative that Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government is expected to revive later this month.
Reform’s push to undermine building projects central to Labour’s growth strategy is the latest illustration of the increasing polarisation in British politics, and underscores a breakdown in the consensus about things like high-speed rail and net-zero goals.
The party founded by Farage similarly threatened wind developers with the future cancellation of subsidies in the run-up to a key auction in July.
The warnings have echoes of President Donald Trump’s efforts to undo his predecessor Joe Biden’s green agenda in the United States, epitomised by the Inflation Reduction Act.
Trump’s attacks on wind and solar projects have thrown America’s clean energy industry into crisis, putting billions of US dollars of investment at risk and threatening thousands of jobs.
Tice, for his own part, called the curtailed and much-delayed HS2 rail project – which was originally due to connect London with the northern England city of Manchester – a “disaster”. He vowed to stop Northern Powerhouse Rail, too.
“To anyone tempted to bid for the Liverpool-Manchester high-speed scheme, or the revived northern leg of HS2, I give this warning: do not bother,” said Tice, who represents Boston and Skegness in north-east England. “A Reform government will spend the money instead on things the country needs more.”
Starmer and his Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves are counting on investment to spur growth, rebuild public services and more evenly redistribute wealth around the country.
Reeves needs to close a gap of about £35bil when she announces her budget on Nov 26, Bloomberg Economics has estimated, due largely to a looming productivity downgrade by the Office for Budget Responsibility.
The chancellor’s plan for growth is expected to include Northern Powerhouse Rail, a project which was originally proposed by then-Conservative government more than a decade ago to improve connectivity between Liverpool and Hull.
The plans have been repeatedly pared back, and delays and cuts to the HS2 project – which would have shared some of its infrastructure with the Northern Powerhouse Rail – have added further complications. — Bloomberg
