Economic sophistry. The train will just make it easier for rural residents to work in London further hollowing out the countryside's economy.
British conservatives are just like New York Republicans -- present company excepted, of course.
Not exactly, in this case, since there will be no stops in rural areas, only in the major cities. This is emphatically not a commuter service.
That said, the evidence from Europe suggests that this will do little to rectify the ever-increasing London & South East-centred imbalance in the British economy. The money would be far better spent on improving the existing transport infrastructure between the regions (such as North West/North East), and to neglected regions such as the South-West, which have missed out on most recent rail and road investment.