Exclusive: Business leaders seek support for scheme in budget as former chancellor calls it ‘good investment’

The former Tory chancellor George Osborne has thrown his weight behind a proposal nicknamed “HS2-lite” that would deliver new high-speed train links between Manchester and Birmingham.

Osborne said the worst thing Rishi Sunak did as prime minister was cancelling the northern arm of HS2. “It was an act of infrastructure vandalism,” he said.