The latest delays to this colossal folly offer a golden opportunity to cry halt – and use railway money where it’s really needed
It is death by gangrene. No government seems to have the guts to kill HS2, Britain’s biggest and craziest infrastructure project, so each merely lops off another limb. In 2021, it was Leeds. Now the opening of the Birmingham-to-Manchester and Acton-to-Euston lines has been delayed.
This railway is a southern project on which the chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, is blowing a staggering £100m a week or £5bn a year. He is paying HS2’s boss £622,000 a year, and its executives in the region of £250,000. After six hopeless chairs, Whitehall last month desperately turned to a civil servant, Sir Jonathan Thompson, to take charge.
Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist
