The new prime minister is right to focus on investment outside southeast England

Much of what he said in his speech, including about the importance of buses, could have been said by Jeremy Corbyn and indeed has been. There is nothing wrong with consensus on the right questions

Boris Johnson delivering his ‘northern powerhouse’ speech (Getty)

Some of Boris Johnson’s advisers wanted him to make his first speech as prime minister outside London, before he even addressed the House of Commons on Thursday.

In the event, he chose to face MPs in Westminster first and then to travel to Manchester to deliver a speech about infrastructure, and that was probably the right order of business.

A new prime minister should speak in parliament at the earliest opportunity – but to go outside the southeast of England to deliver his next big speech was an important statement of intent.

Mr Johnson’s theme was also a good one. His promise to invest in a faster rail link between Leeds and Manchester is to be welcomed. So much so that even the Labour Party could only complain it was an announcement that Conservative ministers have made many times before.

In his first speech on policy as prime minister, Mr Johnson floated happily above such details as actual amounts of public spending, or a timetable, or hard questions about the implications for HS2 – a bigger high-speed rail project already at a more advanced stage.

The Independent has long had its reservations about HS2, on the grounds that it might at a huge cost simply increase the gravitational pull of London and the southeast on the UK economy. And we have long advocated investment in improving rail links outside the southeast.

That argument has been strengthened in recent years by the Brexit vote. We know the “left behind” analysis can be overdone but, to the extent that people outside southeast England feel that policies made in London and Brussels are remote from their own concerns, local and regional infrastructure investment is a part of the answer.

There was a patronising touch in Mr Johnson’s reference in his speech to improving “the unglamorous local services which people use every day”, such as buses, but it is nonetheless true.

Such investment is also made more urgent by the climate crisis. If Mr Johnson is serious about reaching the target of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, better rail links – and indeed zero-carbon bus services – ought to be part of the solution.

The new prime minister has, therefore, done the easy part. He has got out of the capital and spoken warmly about the need for the country as a whole to tilt investment away from the southeast. Much of what he said in his speech, including about the importance of buses, could have been said by Jeremy Corbyn and indeed has been.

Nothing wrong with that. The Independent is all for bipartisanship and consensus when it is on the right questions. But delivery is the hard part, as well as taking decisions that create winners and losers. Mr Johnson has not really started yet.