There is a danger that the symbolism of scrapping a railway line to Manchester, while standing

on a stage in a former railway exchange in Manchester, might play into a kind of deep

narrative about laws and portrayals.

Hello and welcome to Political Fix, your essential insider guide to Westminster from the

Financial Times with me, Lucy Fisher.

You heard there, the FT's Gen Williams talking about the message it sends to the North,

that Rishi Sunak this week decided to scrap the Northern leg of the high speed two rail

link that was due to connect Manchester and Birmingham, more from her later.

But first, joining me in the studio now are the FT's Robert Schimzley, hi Robert.

Hey Lucy.

And the FT's George Parker, hi George.

Hi Lucy, I'm just going to say Robert and I both nursing conference cult, so we'll

try and set a bit further away from the microphone than usual.

Although obviously collegiality requires you to have called it my next week.

So coming up, we're just over halfway through the grueling party conference season as George

just attested to there.

We'll look back at the Tories get together in Manchester and what that tells us about

the kind of election campaign the Conservatives want to run and we'll cast a head to Labour

and the challenge facing Keir Starmer.

First up, Robert, you had a fascinating column on what Sunak has tried to achieve with

this conference, particularly with his 65 minute, pretty lengthy speech that was the

grand finale of the four day meeting in Manchester.

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