On a fast train to nowhere: Rishi Sunak’s visionless party conference

Editorial: The prime minister’s lack of ambition for HS2 and the climate crisis is a tragedy

All Sunak has done with his ‘pragmatic’ approach to HS2 and to net zero is to create more uncertainty (PA)

Ever since The Independent broke the story two-and-a-half weeks ago that Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt were in talks about cancelling the high-speed rail link to Manchester, the Conservative Party’s choice of Manchester as the venue for its annual conference has been a slow-motion disaster.

Now that ministers, party bigwigs, representatives and journalists have arrived – not even by low-speed rail, whose workers are on strike – the scale of the damage to the party’s reputation is unfolding.

Theresa May became this weekend the fourth of Mr Sunak’s Conservative predecessors to criticise him. She said that HS2 should be completed to provide more capacity on the West Coast Main Line, and she disagreed with the plan to end the line at Old Oak Common, six miles out of Euston, “because my constituents will be disadvantaged”.