Reform UK would axe any high-speed northern rail schemes, says Richard Tice | Rail industry
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/sep/08/reform-uk-would-axe-any-high-speed-northern-rail-schemes-says-richard-tice
Posted by UuusernameWith4Us
Reform UK would axe any high-speed northern rail schemes, says Richard Tice | Rail industry
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/sep/08/reform-uk-would-axe-any-high-speed-northern-rail-schemes-says-richard-tice
Posted by UuusernameWith4Us
32 Comments
Reform are actively trying to undermine infrastructure investment and set back progress by decades.
I never understand why anyone would be against improving the infrastructure of the country.
Reform are showing that they’re the fascist party of the south. Farage is “concerned” about the boats crossings, he’s concerned about how to use London to set up shell companies for his tax dodging, and Tice is wanting to kill off investment in the North.
I can’t see how any Northerner would ever bother voting for them.
Another “fuck anyone but the south of england” manoeuvre. You’d think they’d want to try not to alienate potential voters but you know, alienating people is pretty much their entire ethos.
Reform hate the UK. How much evidence do people need?
Do they have a single positive thing on the agenda?
This is great, This is something I think the public would appose. Hopefully it’ll be pushed by the media and negatively affect their ratings.
All we need now is for another party to emerge that is a middle ground between labour and Reform.
Reform just want to wreck the UK. Their supporters just want to burn it all down so everyone else’s life is as crap as theirs.
Let’s hope people wake up and realise that if Reform gets into power they will be responsible for more than immigration. I doubt it but this is why single issue voting is a terrible idea: you get everything that comes with Reform, which is going to fuck a lot of their voters over. Investing in tiny violins might not be such a bad idea if Reform comes to power.
Seventeen billion for thirty miles of rail, seems expensive.
Who needs high-speed rail when the English invented trains that will run on Great British coal…
Were going to reopen the canals and turnpikes, things were better in the old days.
Reform have probably worked out that they will save no money from cancelling HS2 and that said cancellation would be as much as a political headache as continuing with it. So they need to find something else that can be cancelled.
Is he talking about Britain or Dubai, where he lives?
This is also the same party that wanted to axe HS2 in the 2024 manifesto, in spite of it being fully under construction. Reform are complete idiots
Bring back Steam Trains, Corsets and excessively large Sideburns!!!
I don’t hate the idea of building a tunnel under Manchester, but it’s not exactly new.
The real money is in the South… Why would you invest in the North?
So they don’t want the north to have hi speed trains, and have previously argued against pylons of all things, why would anybody actually vote for these idiots.
Not even in government and already laying into the north, just what we need, less interest from central government.
Just think, if we do go to war with Russia, and we need to move men, munitions and machines around the country as quick and efficiently as possible, high speed rail will help free up rail capacity. So of course, nobody in Reform would go for that.
Ofcourse they would. They don’t want to help the north.
Makes perfect sense. Farage already said they would reopen the coal mines.
Reform would therefore usher in a new golden age of steam!
What’s their reasoning ? There’s a direct relation between high speed public transport and economic growth.
You know what’s the first thing china did when trying to improve ? Build the biggest HS train network in the world.
They seem to be able to get away with saying daft stuff like this just because people think they will kick out all the brown people.
I can see here that everyone has an opinion on whether we should level up or invest into our more established successful areas.
Incidentally this was something that I didn’t like about the EU.
Informed Remainers will know this, but the annual dishing out of eg science budgets was always contentious for the same reason.
Do you give back to the UK because it has some great science centers or do you level up eg Latvia that is way behind and can’t compete?
It’s just nice that we can decide for ourselves. At least Reform are making this clear.
Voters can act accordingly.
Unless they get brainwashed by billionaires and Russians rofl
Why on earth would anyone support this?
If the British left focused on economics and accepted lower numbers of immigration they’d probably do well – need to learn from the Danish left.
They need things to remain shitty so they can point the finger at immigrants and say its their fault.
I really hope all this support for Reform is just a protest to keep the far left of Labour at bay. Surely people don’t actually want these nutters running the country. We’ll just get Trussonomics on steroids and they won’t bail it out this time.
At the start, I saw HS2 as a white elephant, better ways to spend the money on the network (track upgrades, signalling speed upgrades, improving stations, reducing bottlenecks, electrificiation).
At this stage, it should be built and finished in it’s entirety, with stations at cities moved to the centre more
Axing it at this stage would be nightmarish. Oh. But it would free up a lot of land, that is now brownbelt for development. He doesn’t have rich friends who’d be more than happy to buy that at public expense, does he?
Reform UK are an arm of the financial and corporate worlds, all they want is lower taxes and easier legislative environments, Reform will cut any and all spending to achieve this, they will start with high-speed rail, and it will end with pensions, social security and the NHS.
The future of this country has never been so precarious.
No infrastructure for the north then? Cheers, Dick.