Rishi Sunak to announce £30bn of transport spending in conference speech
Rishi Sunak will announce around £30bn of spending on road, rail and buses in his conference speech.
The big spending commitment will come to sweeten the pill that the second leg of HS2, linking Birmingham and Manchester, won’t be fulfilled.
Speculation about what will or won’t happen to High-Speed Rail has been raging for weeks – and providing a serious distraction to the Conservative Party conference.
The second leg of high-speed rail – from Birmingham to Manchester – won’t go ahead.
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Sunak: ‘No one wants an election’
The prime minister and his team will be hoping the extra spending on road and rail will placate MPs, businesses and lobby groups’ concerns about the impact of downgrading HS2.
Election would be ‘massive distraction’ – Tory conference latest
In London, the high-speed track will be extended from Old Oak Common in west London to Euston.
This means that passengers can get on a train at Euston and travel to Birmingham on a high-speed railway, before the train will switch to the existing West Coast Mainline track to travel to Manchester.
A source told Sophy Ridge: “This will mean unreliable and infrequent trains to Manchester – there just isn’t capacity for this to work. Using the existing track will our extra pressure on the west coast mainline.”
Read more:
HS2 won’t be high speed between Manchester and Birmingham
They added: “Cancelling Northern Powerhouse Rail will require a vote in the Commons to override the hybrid bills automatic continuation in King’s speech.
“The question is does the prime minister have the numbers against the opposition parties united against him as well.”
Number 10 have said they don’t comment on speculation.
The Thai government is reportedly set to allow tourists to exchange crypto for Thai baht and make electronic payments through e-money service providers.
Charles O. Parks III, who admitted to misusing $3.5 million worth of resources from two cloud computing providers to mine crypto, was sentenced to one year and one day in prison.
If there’s one thing the past 24 hours has confirmed, it’s that it’s still Donald Trump’s world, and we’re all just living in it.
In the aftermath of the Alaska meeting, the US president’s deal-making skills came under question when he seemingly walked away empty-handed.
But it was clear he had retained his ability to catch everyone off guard, as a meeting between him and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy unexpectedly became a last-minute White House peace summit.
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Ukraine faces biggest challenge yet ahead of White House talks
The invitation to European leaders drifted out, and within hours, the cast list had grown to include six more, as world leaders dropped everything to fit in with Mr Trump’s unpredictable timetable.
There were signs of disorganisation behind the scenes.
When the British Prime Minister’s spokesman was asked who the invite had come from – the White House or the Ukrainian president – they replied: “A bit of both.”
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What happened when Zelenskyy last went to White House
Read more:
The land Ukraine could be told to give up
Key takeaways from Alaska summit
Meanwhile, the meeting of the coalition of the willing – a Starmer and Macron-led group of Ukraine’s European allies – had a nervous feel to it as members resolved to stand firm with Ukraine – even if it puts them at odds with the US.
At times, it sounded like they were trying to convince themselves they could do it.
And as all of this frantic diplomatic reaction played out, the man in the middle of it all headed to the golf course – calm at the centre of the diplomatic storm he created as his allies swirl around him.
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