Boris Johnson is coming under growing pressure to push ahead with the controversial HS2 rail project - as long as he opens a high speed trans-Pennine line at the same time.
Former Tory chancellor George Osborne - now a newspaper editor - said yesterday the major North-South line “must go ahead”.
But he urged the Prime Minister to go further and sign off HS3 - a fast route connecting Northern cities from east to west.
It comes amid fears that HS2 - which has ballooned in cost to £88bn - could be ditched after Mr Johnson called for Cabinet ministers to review spending.
The Mirror has called for HS3 to be built first - and believes that HS2 must start from Leeds and Manchester and be built southbound.
Mr Osborne told the BBC: “HS2 is absolutely critical to changing the economic geography of this country. For the nation that invented the railway, the fact we are the only nation in Europe without high-speed lines should be an embarrassment.”
And he added: “HS2 must go ahead. It must be accompanied by what is called Northern Powerhouse Rail or HS3, which is across the North. I think that’s critical.”
Andy Street, Mayor of the West Midlands, said scrapping HS2 would “set back” the revival of the wider Birmingham region “by decades”.
He said: “The Prime Minister and the Government talk about ‘levelling up’, getting the Midlands, and indeed the North, to the sort of standards of wealth enjoyed in London.
“And I see this is an absolutely critical way of achieving that. And if it didn’t go ahead, obviously it would set back our revival by decades.”
