Northern rail deserves an honest answer, not another consultation
The case for serious investment has been made. The case for further studies has not.
Another consultation on northern rail investment was announced this week. The case for the investment itself was made, comprehensively, a decade ago. The case for spending another year asking the same questions has not been made at all.
The economics are not contested. Every credible analysis since the original Northern Powerhouse Rail proposals has reached the same broad conclusion: the return on investment is large, the regional consequences of inaction are larger still, and the gap between what the North has and what it needs is widening.
What is contested, evidently, is the political appetite. Successive governments have committed to packages they then partially withdraw, citing fiscal pressure that somehow does not arise when comparable investments are proposed for the South East.
The honest position would be to admit that the country cannot, simultaneously, claim to take regional inequality seriously and treat northern infrastructure as a discretionary line item. One of those two propositions has to give.
Northern leaders, of every party, are running out of patience. The consultation that matters is the one between the government and itself.
