“It’s like a bad Christmas cracker joke,” said one northern leader in England as the government announced its latest Network North transport project: fixing potholes in London.
The punchline, said Kim McGuinness, Labour’s candidate to be the mayor of north-east England, isn’t even funny. It’s “Tories celebrating widening the widening north/south divide”.
There was anger and exasperation on Wednesday after the Department for Transport (DfT) confirmed funding “for each London borough to ensure millions of road users enjoy smoother and safer journeys”.
The £235m of London pothole money was possible only because of £8.3bn of extra investment which came from scrapping HS2.
In a social media announcement with a photograph of a worker driving a road roller, the London scheme is billed as a Network North project.
McGuinness, the police and crime commissioner for Northumbria, said not much shocked her about the government any more.
“But it’s incredible to think a Tory minister thought it was a good idea to scrap railway lines to the north and use the cash to fix potholes in London and then show off about it. They’ve given up on the north haven’t they?”
Those sentiments were echoed by Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester. “Network North seems to include everywhere – except the north,” he said, responding to the government’s tweet.
Tracy Brabin, the mayor of West Yorkshire, said: “I know the north isn’t a priority for this government but seriously?”
The shadow transport secretary, Louise Haigh, called the announcement “ludicrous”.
She said: “First Sunak cancels the biggest rail investment in the north in a generation. Then he promises to ‘join up’ the north and Midlands with ‘Network North’.
“Now it turns out ‘Network North’ actually means … repairing roads in London. You couldn’t make it up.”
Tim Farron, the Lib Dem MP for Westmorland and Lonsdale, joked: “Great to see the rural northern village of London finally getting the levelling up funding it deserves.”
A DfT spokesperson said the government had said all along that money saved from the scrapping of HS2 would be spent across the country.
Rishi Sunak was accused of the “biggest and most damaging U-turn in the history of UK infrastructure” when he announced in October that the northern leg of HS2 would be scrapped.
He promised to divert £36bn into transport in the Midlands and north and published a plan. It was titled Network North and included the sentence: “Roads will be improved right across the country with billions to fill potholes.”
Announcing the investment last month, Sunak said: “For too long politicians have shied away from taking the right long-term decisions to make life easier for hard-working families – tackling the scourge of potholes being a prime example.
“This unprecedented £8.3bn investment will pave the road for better and safer journeys for millions of people across the country and put an end to the blight of nuisance potholes.”
It was not the first time the prime minister has focused on potholes. In the spring he was mocked after a photograph went viral of him taking a forensic interest in a Darlington pothole, flanked by the local councillor Jonathan Dultson, the town’s MP Peter Gibson and Tees Valley mayor Ben Houchen.
The pothole has since been fixed.
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