Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls with Labour’s Hampstead candidate Tulip Siddiq. Inset: Maria Eagle

Published: 26 September, 2013
by RICHARD OSLEY

MARIA Eagle was going to be just five minutes late for a room of Labour Conference fringe-meeting rail enthusiasts on Monday, an audience generally salivating at the thought of the HS2  project and hoping for a gallon of reassurance that the party is not on the brink of finally spiking the £50billion link.

Five minutes became 10 and then 10 became 20: still no sign of the shadow transport minister, and on went the wait to find out where she now stands on a project set to blow a hole in Camden for the best part of a decade.

She’s on her way, she’s on her way, the chairman of the meeting, organised by trade magazine Transport Times, was assured by a whispering man at the back of the upstairs function room at the seafront Holiday Inn hotel in Brighton.

Hundreds of homes and businesses in the borough will be flattened if the scheme goes ahead, while attempts to link the London to Birmingham route with the existing HS1 will lead to Camden Town becoming a construction site as bridges are dismantled and rebuilt.

The most suspicious onlookers became convinced that Ms Eagle was quickly trying to digest what Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls had just said on the main conference stage, when, with a curveball to the pro-HS2 camp, he started musing about what else could be bought with £50bn of government spending.

“The question is: not just whether a new high-speed line is a good idea or a bad idea, but whether it is the best way to spend £50bn for the future of the country,” he had said, adding: “Labour will not take an irresponsible approach.”

This was shortly before Ms Eagle was about to speak on the future of high-speed rail at the fringe meeting and his words were zipping from mouth to ear all around the conference.

The hare had been set running: was this a freestyle riff from Mr Balls or is Labour about to abandon a plan originally drawn up by New Labour sweetheart Lord Andrew Adonis?

It was not until a full three-quarters of an hour that Ms Eagle finally appeared at the door of the meeting – there was hardly a single complimentary egg mayonnaise sandwich left, the tea urn was dry. She shuffled to the front of the panel, chirping that she was surprised everybody was still there.

She then began reading from a piece of paper about what Mr Balls had just said, telling the room that she agreed that, under a Labour government, there needed to be a tight spending review of the scheme.

There has been loud talk this political conference season that, if politicians were frank, HS2 is more likely to cost closer to £70bn.

The most cynical at the back of the room muttered that she gave the impression of a front-bencher who suspected a reshuffle looms, a mean assessment, possibly, deduced on little more than that she needed so many notes.

Snatching a chance to quiz her, the New Journal broke with fringe-meeting etiquette, which normally sees journalists stay silent while members and delegates put questions, by asking Ms Eagle directly across the floor: “What does this mean for Camden?”

Ms Eagle promised that if Labour returned to government, a more serious approach to mitigation in Camden would be followed.

“I’ve picked up on this issue,” she told this newspaper.

“We’ve now got this zero-based review to look at whether £50billion should be spent on HS2, but as long as we’re going ahead with it – and it is – I’m not satisfied with the southern end and the way it keeps changing and linking HS1 and HS2 over the busiest bit of the North London line. It has huge implications for the economic heart of Camden.”

Ms Eagle, who refers to the project as “the north-south line” rather than HS2, added: “There’s time to change it.

"There’s no spade in the ground even in the current timetable before 2017.

"The Bill isn’t through, it’s not introduced. It’s not going to be through by the end of this Parliament. There’s a chance therefore to look at how the London terminus fits. We would want to do that quickly after the election if we win.”

But it is the confusion between one frontbencher and another which has made it a testing week in the sunshine for delegates and members from Camden who want to know where Labour really is at with HS2 and who would prefer it to become the first main party nationally to be directly opposed to using such a huge chunk of public money.

At another fringe meeting, Mr Balls was reportedly running through a list of alternative ways of spending the money, and he has already said, when money is pinched, another runway at Heathrow would be his either/or choice on big infrastructure. This has caused consternation from the pro-HS2 camp.

The most outlandish rumour – but who knows in politics? – is that supporters of Lord Adonis have, internally, threatened a Blairite-flavoured rebellion if Ed Miliband presses the “no” button on HS2.

And then on the other side, there are trade unions who are not against the idea.

Although not a member of the Labour Party, for example, the RMT’s Bob Crow has warm sentiments towards the project, which could spell confrontation in future if Labour was bold enough to cancel the project.

Ms Eagle, meanwhile, for her part seemed to insist on being more protective of HS2 – or “the north-south line” – when speaking at other conference engagements and the whispers and briefings were so loud along the promenade that it was difficult to believe there had not been some high-level fallout in important hotel rooms.

“I’d like to see the party have a clear position,” said council leader Councillor Sarah Hayward, who has spearheaded the local campaign against HS2 and was in the thick of the action this week.

“That’s why we were lobbying and pressing ministers this week at conference.”