The chancellor's new enthusiasm is for a high-speed rail link along a Northern axis from Liverpool through Manchester to Leeds and Sheffield. No doubt his promise is cheap when the next general election is close and the Tories need to show their solicitude for the north; delivery will be much more expensive, and construction is a long way away, not least because the initial plan is only to link Manchester and Leeds.
The announcement is significant because it co-opts some northern councils and aligns national government with an increasingly influential explanation for London's economic success and the north's failure. This agglomeration theory is proposed by academics such as Henry Overman at the London School of Economics and endorsed by Evan Davies' recent TV programme Mind the Gap: London vs the Rest, and says that the problem of the north is that it doesn't have a city of 3.5 million and so it can't hack it in the era of globalisation.
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