“It’s like a bad Christmas cracker joke,” said one northern leader in England as the government announced its latest Network North transport project: fixing potholes in London.
The punchline, said Kim McGuinness, Labour’s candidate to be the mayor of north-east England, isn’t even funny. It’s “Tories celebrating widening the widening north/south divide”.
There was anger and exasperation on Wednesday after the Department for Transport (DfT) confirmed funding “for each London borough to ensure millions of road users enjoy smoother and safer journeys”.
The £235m of London pothole money was possible only because of £8.3bn of extra investment which came from scrapping HS2.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
“It’s like a bad Christmas cracker joke,” said one northern leader in England as the government announced its latest Network North transport project: fixing potholes in London.
There was anger and exasperation on Wednesday after the Department for Transport (DfT) confirmed funding “for each London borough to ensure millions of road users enjoy smoother and safer journeys”.
“But it’s incredible to think a Tory minister thought it was a good idea to scrap railway lines to the north and use the cash to fix potholes in London and then show off about it.
Tim Farron, the Lib Dem MP for Westmorland and Lonsdale, joked: “Great to see the rural northern village of London finally getting the levelling up funding it deserves.”
Announcing the investment last month, Sunak said: “For too long politicians have shied away from taking the right long-term decisions to make life easier for hard-working families – tackling the scourge of potholes being a prime example.
In the spring he was mocked after a photograph went viral of him taking a forensic interest in a Darlington pothole, flanked by the local councillor Jonathan Dultson, the town’s MP Peter Gibson and Tees Valley mayor Ben Houchen.
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