Labour now says the botched high-speed rail project will be further delayed. Why not just scrap it, as the Reform leader suggests?
Stop it now. Stop spending sums that you admit are out of control. Show common sense and send everyone home. HS2 is a bad joke, a fiasco.
Labour’s second transport secretary in a year, Heidi Alexander, claimed on Wednesday to be shocked by HS2. She was clearly new to the subject. After being briefed on the latest delays and cost overruns by the latest CEO, Mark Wild, she said that the project was “an appalling mess … a litany of failure … unsustainable”. It was as if she had just entered a morgue and disliked the smell.
What then? Alexander read out the usual dog-eared transport department brief. It said she would “draw a line in the sand” and “get the job done”. She did not know what it might cost or when it might actually open. But since it would be at least eight years overdue, no one need really care.
Every other spending minister has a right to howl. Each day of the year, Alexander signs away £20m to fund a 12-year-old vanity project of a Tory prime minister, David Cameron. That is to meet HS2’s current Treasury subsidy of £7bn a year.
