But former Tory prime minister David Cameron said the decision would fuel the view that Britain cannot act for the long-term and is “heading in the wrong direction”.
Boris Johnson, another former Conservative prime minister, wrote “I agree” in response to Mr Cameron’s scathing post on X, formerly known as Twitter.
His keynote speech in Manchester saw him make several announcements, including a plan to phase out smoking, in a bid to pitch himself as a politician delivering “change” despite his party having been in power since 2010.
Mr Sunak confirmed HS2 will run from Euston in central London to Birmingham but will no longer extend beyond the West Midlands, with Manchester among the areas missing out.
Instead, Mr Sunak promised to use £36 billion of savings from scrapping sections of HS2 to fund a raft of other transport schemes.
We want to know – Was Rishi Sunak right to scrap HS2? Vote now in our online poll:
READ MORE:
HS2 decision signals rail project going ‘off-track’
Rishi Sunak axes HS2 but will invest funds in Scottish roads projects
What is the impact of cutting plan north of Birmingham?
HS2, announced by the last Labour government but backed by successive Tory administrations, was in 2015 given a £55.7 billion budget for its route from London to Birmingham with a Y-shaped section to Manchester and Leeds.
But reports have suggested its costs have breached the £100 billion mark, even with the Leeds element having been binned in 2021.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel