The British Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, tried this Wednesday to establish himself as a champion of changewith the upcoming elections as a background, at the closing of the annual congress of the Conservative Party in which he announced the amputation of a controversial high-speed railway line.
“We will be bold. We will give the country what it so desperately needs and which, however, has too often been denied“he proclaimed, despite the fact that his party has been in power for thirteen years.
“Our mission is to fundamentally change our country,” stressed the head of government, 43 years old and in charge of the country for almost a year, in his speech lasting about an hour in Manchester.
His intervention, the first as leader of the Tories‘, it occurs at a time when the conservatives are about twenty points below Labor in voting intention surveys for elections that must be carried out before January 2025.
Putting an end to a suspense that almost monopolized attention during the four days of the congress, Rishi Sunak confirmed the abandonment of the construction project of a section of the country’s second bullet train line (HS2), between Birmingham and Manchester.
“Instead, we will reinvest every penny, £37.5bn ($45.5bn) into hundreds of new projects in the north and the Midlands,” he launched to the applause of the room, although also with the incomprehension of the authorities of the areas concerned by this annulment.
Criticism of Sunak
“I don’t know how you can look in the mirror,” the Labor mayor of Manchester, Andy Burnham, said angrily on the BBC. The project symbolized the promise of rebalancing for the benefit of disadvantaged regions in the north of England.
Its abandonment is also delicate because those same regions, traditionally Labor, took a turn to the right in the elections won by the conservatives led by Boris Johnson in 2019, after Brexit.
“If the project is annulled, it will not increase the Conservative Party’s chances of gaining parliamentarians in the affected areas of the north of England,” Mark Garnett, political science professor at Lancaster University, told AFP shortly before the speech.
Sunak ruled out a tax cut, advocated by conservative leaders in a context of economic difficulties and rising cost of living. “The best tax cut you can do now is to halve inflation and lower the cost of living,” she declared.
Ban tobacco
Sunak reiterated his support for Ukraine, so that the former Soviet republic “finishes the job” against the Russian invasion and repeated that he will do “whatever is necessary” to stop the flow of migrant boats illegally crossing the English Channel.
He also proposed putting an end to tobacco consumption, gradually increasing the legal age to buy cigarettes. The Tories’ congress was less chaotic than last year, led by the short-lived Prime Minister Liz Truss, although it was not completely peaceful either.
“Conservatives have made announcements in this Congress that they believe will increase their popularity, in full offensive against immigration or “wokes” (progressives) or with statements in defense of motorists, said political scientist Garnett.
These are advertisements “especially designed to increase the enthusiasm of party members with a government severely criticized by some of its own followers,” he added.
AFP
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