Watch as Rishi Sunak closes the annual Conservative Party conference on Wednesday 4 October.
The prime minister has defied a backlash from Tory colleagues and northern leaders by abandoning the high-speed rail route to Manchester as he seeks to portray himself as a radical reformer.
He used his conference speech in the northern city to axe the HS2 leg from Birmingham as he criticises 30 years of a “broken” system incentivising “the easy decision, not the right one”.
With the Tories having been in charge for the majority of the last three decades, Mr Sunak pitched himself as the man to “fundamentally change our country” ahead of an election expected next year.
Mr Sunak also pledged to reinvest around £36 billion of savings into road and rail schemes in the North and Midlands, as he confirmed the northern leg of HS2 has been scrapped.
Ahead of his speech, his wife, Akshata Murthy, also addressed the conference hall.
