Starmer's new bus scheme puts him on the path of failed prime ministers

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04-06-2025

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Northern transport schemes have become something of a panic button for prime ministers worried about falling popularity in the polls.
With Sir Keir Starmer less popular than Sir Ed Davey, his Liberal Democrat counterpart, the Labour leader sent his Chancellor out to bat for him with Wednesday's announcement.
Yet close watchers of politics might feel that some of the sums unveiled by Rachel Reeves, as part of what she described as 'the biggest ever investment by a British government in transport links in our city regions and the surrounding towns', are suspiciously similar to previous pledges.
Those include £978 million for transport projects in the Tees Valley region, a sum previously announced in 2023 by the Tories and then placed under review by Labour after last year's general election.
A similar situation holds true for the Liverpool city region, which was awarded £1.581 billion in 2023 under the city region sustainable transport settlement, after Wednesday's £1.581 billion award under Labour's newly unveiled transport for city regions funding settlements.
Gareth Davies, the shadow treasury minister, said: 'Rachel Reeves is scrambling to salvage her failing economic plan after the Prime Minister has made U-turn after U-turn, punching holes in her credibility.
'She needed to do better than copying and pasting announcements made by the previous Conservative government. The country is not falling for their lies any more. Britain deserves better.'
Here are some of the times in the recent past when prime ministers have reached for northern transport funding announcements to shore up their sagging popularity.
Mr Brown, who succeeded Sir Tony Blair as prime minister, said he would improve public transport in Sunderland if his party won the 2010 general election.
His manifesto that year also promised 'upgrades to Tyne and Wear light-rail systems' and electronic ticketing to promote 'cheap and easy' public transport across the country.
It wasn't the first time Mr Brown had fallen back on promises of boosting transport spending outside London and the South East.
The previous December, he opened the HS1 railway line in Kent while promising that it would become 'a blueprint for the future of high-speed rail travel in the United Kingdom'. He added, referring to the then not-yet-started project, that HS2 was going to 'make the case for a national high-speed rail network across this country'.
Not long after Sir Tony handed over the premiership to Mr Brown, an act followed by a slump in the opinion polls and strong rumours of a 2008 snap election, the new prime minister was forced to deny that transport spending was skewed towards London and the South East.
'The Government has doubled expenditure on transport. It continues to move forward with its road programme, but also its rail and infrastructure programme,' Mr Brown said that year.
'And I don't think it's true to say that transport spending has been skewed to one particular area. In every part of the country, we are expanding transport according to the needs of these different areas.
'The important thing to recognise about transport is that we are investing in every part of the country.'
In October 2010, the Tory-Lib Dem government announced deep public spending cuts as part of George Osborne's austerity programme, with the transport budget set for cuts of around 15 per cent.
Mr Osborne spearheaded the Northern Powerhouse Rail project, a slogan that promised a lateral high-speed railway line across northern England, alongside plans for HS2 to move off the drawing board and into reality.
As the 2015 general election loomed, however, David Cameron – now Baron Cameron of Chipping Norton – started adopting the familiar refrain of North-centric transport announcements in an attempt to woo voters.
'I think it is important that to reassure people in the next parliament we're going to spend three times more on other transport schemes, road and rail schemes, as we'll spend on HS2,' he told ITV News in 2014, ahead of the following year's general election.
A year later, the prime minister was back out on the stump, promising in a YouTube video addressed to voters in Accrington, Lancashire: 'Today I'm here in the North West talking about how we're going to invest in our universities, in our science base, how we're going to build the roads and railways and infrastructure that we need for our future so we get a balanced recovery right across our country.'
The promise may have worked: in 2015 the Conservatives secured a clear majority, meaning they could govern without their erstwhile Lib Dem coalition partners.
A year after that, Mr Cameron dramatically stepped down after losing the 2016 EU membership referendum.
Mr Cameron's 2016 successor was Theresa May, who felt the heat of unpopularity as early as two years into her premiership.
As part of a policy intended to 'help spread growth beyond London', a total of ten city regions around the country – including Greater Manchester, Cambridge, Peterborough, Plymouth, Southampton and Sheffield, among others – were handed a total of £1.7 billion between them for transport projects.
'Our great cities and their suburbs are home to millions of people and world-beating businesses,' Mrs May said at the time.
Faced with growing calls for a general election in 2019, she went on to reassure Midlands political and business leaders that the Tories were backing the full length of HS2's northern leg.
She said in a letter to the Midlands Connect trade association: 'I would like to take this opportunity to assure you that the Government remains committed to delivering the whole of HS2 Phase 2, and will continue to work closely with you to ensure that the project meets your aspirations for growth and regeneration.'
After Mrs May stepped down in 2019, Boris Johnson won the 2019 Conservative Party leadership election – and called a general election in the same year.
Having been mayor of London, the one-time Telegraph correspondent was already firmly linked in the public imagination with transport projects – but that did not stop him from reaching for the familiar northern transport announcements when the polls were down.
Mr Johnson said in an early 2020 speech: 'I want to be the prime minister who does with Northern Powerhouse Rail what we did for Crossrail in London, and today I am going to deliver on my commitment to that vision with a pledge to fund the Leeds to Manchester route.'
That route has, so far, not materialised.
During her 45 days in office, Liz Truss had little time to say much. Yet in the run-up to her abortive prime ministerial term, she renewed the Conservatives' pledge to build Northern Powerhouse Rail.
'Leeds is still the largest city in Europe without its own metro network and I would work to fix that. And I will get Northern Powerhouse Rail built,' she told a Tory leadership hustings in July 2022.
She did not, in fact, get the train project onto the tracks during her two months in No 10.
Rishi Sunak took a much bolder stance than his predecessors, being best remembered in transport circles for cancelling the northern leg of HS2 and freezing National Highways' smart motorways rollout.
Yet by 2024, paving the ground for that year's general election, the Tory leader was keen to position himself as a generous benefactor for northern transport projects.
'Through reallocating HS2 funding, we're not only investing billions of pounds directly back into our smaller cities, towns and rural areas across the North and Midlands, but we are also empowering their local leaders to invest in the transport projects that matter most to their communities – this is levelling up in action,' he said in a statement that February.
His government's 2023 announcement that HS2 Phase 2 funding was being redirected into various northern transport projects formed the basis of Wednesday's announcement by Rachel Reeves.
Keen observers of politics watching Ms Reeves's speech could be forgiven for believing they had become trapped in the film Groundhog Day.
But the refrain is so familiar from prime ministers in political hot water that it has become a predictable staple of these types of set-piece speech.
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