Sunak and his team. The projects were a list picked from marginal constituencies with little consideration to how useful and likely to happen they'd actually be. NR were not consulted on beforehand (otherwise it would have been made very clear to Sunak how stupid canceling 2a is).What on earth are the "suspicion flunkeys"who gave the list of possibilities ?
If Sunak cared about things like value for money, as mentioned in the HS2 cancellation announcements, then he wouldn't be changing projects with a good BCR (HS2) to ones with an abysmal BCR (North Wales electrification).