Boris Johnson has been accused of a “great train robbery” by reneging on a promise to Red Wall voters to extend the high speed rail network HS2 to the north and midlands of England.
Even Conservative MPs criticised the government after it watered down railway plans and confirmed part of the HS2 high speed line will be scrapped.
Grant Shapps, the transport secretary, unveiled the £96 billion Integrated Rail Plan on Thursday which he said would slash journey times across the Midlands with 110 miles of new high-speed line.
But the original proposal to extend of HS2 from the East Midlands to Leeds has been ditched.
The Northern Powerhouse Rail project has also been downgraded with a new line from Leeds to Manchester via Bradford abandoned.
Shadow Transport Secretary Jim McMahon dismissed the rebranded announcement of funding as “the great train robbery”
McMahon added: “He promised that the North would not be forgotten, he hasn’t just forgotten us - he’s completely sold us out.”
During a visit to a station in Bradford, Labour leader Keir Starmer rammed home the message of mistrust in the Tory leader.
He said: “Yesterday the Prime Minister said he had crashed the car when it came to sleaze, today he has derailed the trains. I’m afraid with him in charge he’s taking the country absolutely nowhere.”
But the Prime Minister was unapologetic about his decision to go back on his original promises.
In the launch document for the new plan, he wrote: ”Some have pre-emptively denounced any departure from those plans as a betrayal of levelling-up. But those who say these things are, in effect, condemning the North and the East Midlands to get nothing for ten years or more. Levelling up cannot wait that long.”
However, Huw Merriman, the Conservative chairman of the Commons Transport committee, summed up the sense of betrayal felt by many backbench Tory MPs.
He said: “The Prime Minister promised that HS2 and Northern Powerhouse rail was not an either/or option and those in Leeds and Bradford may be forgiven for viewing it today as neither.
“This is the danger in selling perpetual sunlight and leaving the others to explain the arrival of moonlight.”
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