Sunak’s desperate dodging of the HS2 question tells us everything we need to know

The PM’s disastrous round of local radio interviews was not just excruciating listening as he repeatedly swerved questions about HS2, says Tom Peck. At times, it was like a desperate pitch for a reboot of TV game show ‘Take Your Pick’

Fixing potholes, Sunak said, is what people really care about (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

It’s not easy doing seven different eight-minute-long live local radio interviews, so Rishi Sunak should be forgiven for becoming temporarily confused on a number of occasions and imagining himself to be taking part in a reboot of the former ITV game show Take Your Pick.

He was, to his credit, extremely good at it. Time and time again, he answered the same very straightforward “yes or no” question – but not once did he give them what they wanted.

If, for any reason, the ghost of the late Des O’Connor was hanging around in the studios at BBC Radio Cornwall, Manchester, Three Counties or anywhere in between, then the great man’s gong went forlornly unbanged.

Because there are, it turns out, actually three answers to a straight yes or no question: they are, “yes”, “no”, and “there are actually spades in the ground right now between London and Birmingham”.

And even if the question is, “Will HS2 go to Manchester, yes or no?”, the answer is: “There are actually spades in the ground right now between London and Birmingham.”

And even if you’re being asked the question, live on BBC Radio Manchester, where you should be able to deduce that there is really keen interest about whether or not HS2 will go to Manchester, the answer is still: “There are actually spades in the ground right now between London and Birmingham.”

In fairness to the prime minister, that wasn’t his only answer. He also answered the question of whether HS2 would be going to Manchester by pointing out that he is “fixing potholes”.

Fixing potholes, he said, is what people really care about, “because that’s what people really care about, that’s where they are right now, in the car, travelling to work or dropping the children off at school. What’s important to your listeners is that we invest in the transport that we use every day”.

He is, of course, right to point out that there are more people using transport services that currently exist than ones that don’t, but it is not an especially useful observation.

He said the words “there are spades in the ground” so many times that the worrying thing is that it might actually be true. HS2 is the largest and most expensive infrastructure project in Europe, and I doubt I am alone in assuming it wasn’t being dug by hand (though that would explain a lot).

He is, of course, right to point out that there are more people using transport services that currently exist than ones that don’t, but it is not an especially useful observation

Ah, don’t worry, I have just checked. It is in fact mainly being dug by two extremely expensive tunnelling machines and they are in the ground, quite literally. They’ve been deliberately buried in a big hole in the ground a few miles outside Paddington Station, in a place called Old Oak Common that no one’s ever heard of. They’re meant to be tunnelling their way into central London, but they can’t because Rishi Sunak still won’t tell anyone where HS2 is going to terminate.

Two of the radio stations he appeared on serve areas that have borne the brunt of immense HS2-related disruption. Enormous tunnels have been dug and whole villages are subject to compulsory purchase orders. He was played a clip of a man crying about the effect it had all had on his local town. It’s impossible not to feel sorry for the man, but grand infrastructure projects always have victims.

But the point is, well… what’s the point? That this bloke’s tears are a solemn but satisfactory price to pay for an incredible thing that should have brought Leeds to within an hour and 20 minutes of London? That could have made Manchester and Birmingham effective suburbs of each other? That would have completely transformed all of England, and made the journey to Scotland hours faster than before? But instead, he’s had his life ruined for a train that’s clearly only going to go between Birmingham and Nowhereville, north-west London, and be of very nearly zero benefit to anyone.

Sunak’s other stock answers were that, actually, he is investing “record sums” in “education” and in “the NHS”, and was very keen to tell anyone who’d listen that he was from “an NHS family”. He will know that the main reason he is investing what are technically “record sums” in schools and hospitals is because you don’t have any choice but to invest “record sums” when a pound has 10 per cent less purchasing power than it did this time last year.

It made for curious listening, as he zapped virtually around the country; everywhere he went being met with appalling tale after appalling tale of a country seemingly in terminal decline. Of how a man in Cornwall had a heart attack and waited an hour and a half for an ambulance. Of how Telford, a town of 200,000 people, no longer has an A&E department. Or of how a school in Sunak’s own constituency is having to hold cake sales and fun days to desperately try and raise £18,000 for some new computers.

One of these fundraising drives, it turns out, had a £10 bottle of wine donated to it, signed by Rishi Sunak himself. To his own former school, Winchester College, he recently gave a donation of £100,000. One doubts they were short of a computer or two beforehand.

And therein, really, lies the problem. People on their way to work probably don’t want to turn on the radio and be told that, actually, they’ve never had it so good. That there’s “record sums” being invested everywhere they look. Because they’ve already taken a very long look at the man on the radio and realised they can see straight through him.

And next year, well, they’ll be playing their own little game of Take Your Pick.