Which way will Labour jump when it comes to a decision on whether to continue supporting HS2?If there is a key question for the travel sector in politics at the moment it is: will Labour still support High Speed 2 (HS2) by the time of the general election in the summer of 2015?
The interesting/alarming (depending on your point of view) answer is that at the moment we just don’t know – things are finely balanced.
The first point to acknowledge, however uncomfortable for supporters of the project, is that there is a growing temptation in the Labour party to seize a tactical advantage by turning against the project. But why?
• The Conservative party would be left isolated, holding on to a policy it never created and that a large part of its grassroots detests.
• The Labour party could lay claim to being disciplined when it comes to spending, and claim the coalition government has mismanaged the scheme.
• They’d be aligned with the Institute of Directors and Institute of Economic Affairs – stealing the traditional bedfellows of the Conservatives.
In short, there is a lot to be politically tempted by. Add into the equation that following the publication of the HS2 Phase 2 route, there have been some serious grumblings within Labour:
• A growing number of MPs in the predominantly Labour heartland that the route carves through are starting to have mailbags/inboxes filled with complaints, and are starting to lean towards Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls’ camp.
• Northern Labour councils that don’t have a station, such as Wakefield, are not happy that billions will be spent on a line that cuts through their boundaries – money that they’d rather see spent on, for example, roads.
• There is also an influential set of London politicians in Camden who are looking with horror at 2,600 homes being demolished to make way for the shiny new tracks.
Up until recently the bulwark against this creeping ‘anti’ sentiment was the personal support of Ed Miliband and the steadfast commitment of the ex-shadow transport secretary, Maria Eagle MP. Eagle has now been shifted to the backwaters of shadow Defra (part punishment for butting heads with the shadow chancellor) and replaced by Mary Creagh, an MP who neighbours Balls.
However, it is not all doom-and gloom for those committed to the scheme. Labour hasn’t dropped the project from its to-do list – it has, more accurately, raised the qualifying bar for the project to get the green light. This allows them to demonstrate that they are responsible, and also to criticise the coalition government for allowing costs to spiral ‘out of control’.
In addition to this, there is a rump of northern Labour MPs who will not allow something they view as vital to their communities to be sacrificed at the altar of short-term political gain. They are already working out ways in which they can counter the negative spin on the project, and we should expect more from them in the coming months – the first part of which is the rebranding of HS2 into ‘the north-south rail link’ and making the argument about capacity rather than speed.
But, above all, they will be looking to ensure that the leader of the Labour Party doesn’t also cave into pressure from the shadow chancellor, and continues to put the national interest ahead of Labour’s.
Gareth Morgan is a political lobbyist and director with Cavendish Communications (www.cavendishpc.co.uk). He is an advisor to the Guild of Travel Management Companies (GTMC)