The future of rail freight in the North of England should be a top priority for the government. That proposal hasn’t been raised at the Labour Party conference yet. The annual congress of the ruling party in British politics has a long list on its agenda. Several voices have been raised to suggest that the subject should be the first business of the day.
The Labour Party is in conference this week in Liverpool. It’s not just one of the most vital ports in the UK. It has become a major modern rail freight hub, delivering traffic onto the congested lines of Northwest England. Failing to solve the congestion issue could derail the entire Labour Party’s ambition for Britain’s industrial and economic growth. That could spell trouble for the prospects of Keir Starmer. His government needs to secure a significant victory at this year’s conference. However, railway development may not be the vote-winner he hopes for. It could derail his premiership, no matter what action he takes.
Challenge if he acts, challenge if he doesn’t
Railway development in the North of England is mired in political pitfalls. Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s predecessor, Rishi Sunak, then leader of the right-wing Conservative government, crashed and burned out of office shortly after cancelling the unaffordable high-speed rail project HS2 to Manchester. Starmer is caught in a dilemma too, and a wrong move could be a high-speed line to his own political derailing.
Announcing a new rail development programme – loosely called Northern Powerhouse Rail – could well leave Starmer open to withering criticism from opposition parties, who are already painting him as a leaderless leader, bending easily in the wind. If he does nothing, then he is open to savage attack from his own party, and not least from the stalking horse for his post – the current mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, who is already widely tipped to make a move to oust Keir Starmer from leadership of the Labour Party.
Unlock rail bottleneck to unlock a political bottleneck
At stake is a long-term solution to the North of England’s chronic congestion nightmare. Across the region – broadly from Liverpool via Manchester to Leeds, Hull and Newcastle – demand far exceeds the railway’s ability to cope. Freight is squeezed for enough paths, which contributes to slow economic growth in the region. It is a common sight to see intermodal services crawl through Manchester’s notorious Castlefield Corridor – a two-track bottleneck in the centre of the city that constrains movement across the whole region.
Already though, the region’s main east-west line is the subject of a multi-billion-pound revamp. The Transpennine Route Upgrade is already well underway and will deliver tangible improvements for freight and passenger traffic. However, the critical bottleneck remains. Furthermore, there is no movement on an ambition to relocate the Trafford Park intermodal terminal in Greater Manchester to a site nearer to the West Coast Main Line. That move could take much of the freight pressure off the Castlefield Corridor, but like NPR, it’s stalled for now.
Pleasing the North politically or economically?
A compromise is on the table. Proposals have been submitted from a consortium of stakeholders, suggesting a brand new ‘high-speed’ line be built between Liverpool and Manchester (see RailTech.com). The routing has not been finalised, and the whole project does not have universal support. Backing it could be politically neutral at best for Keir Starmer. Failing to do so runs the risk of incurring the anger of two high-profile Labour Party members. One of them is Steve Rotheram, the mayor of Liverpool, who is hosting the Labour Party Conference in his city. The other is the even more dangerous Andy Burnham.
Putting that project on hold would undoubtedly ignite a leadership challenge, but there may be no alternative. Britain is basically broke, and Starmer and his Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, have no cash in the treasury to back up their expressed strong support for Northern Powerhouse Rail – in whatever form that may take. Sources have claimed that even a Liverpool – Manchester line would cost £17bn (about €20bn). In the week that Britain celebrates the 200th anniversary of the first modern passenger railway in the world, Keir Starmer may find himself standing in the tracks of a political express train, bearing down on him, and crashing his Labour Party into a political civil war it can ill-afford to fight.