How bad is the HS2 fiasco now? So bad it's time to listen to Nigel Farage
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.
Alexander's statement clearly indicated that she was forbidden to challenge any aspect of the project beyond the ineptitude of its management. This enabled her to play the familiar Starmer card of blaming the opposition for everything that goes wrong, and imply that in her hands all would be fine. We have heard this from a decade of HS2 ministers, not one of whom was in office long enough to withstand its lobbies.
It is a measure of the rottenness of British government that Cameron's project dazzled politicians of both parties as well as the media establishment. Labour's Ed Balls once said it would cancel HS2 if it costs went beyond the then £50bn price tag. But infrastructure is a religious creed. Its shrines, once sanctified by the Treasury, are beyond criticism.
HS2 is clearly a project too big to stop. Everyone I have ever known in government agrees it was a mistake. But to say so in political circles is like questioning the virgin birth. The result is that no transport secretary, no chancellor and no prime minister has felt strong enough to order cancellation.
Boris Johnson, who had once dismissed HS2 as a 'gimmick', merely hacked off its north-east limb. Rishi Sunak hacked off its north-west one. In doing so they slashed whatever value still attached to the project as a whole. It is now no more than a surplus line from an isolated station in central Birmingham to Acton in London, and possibly on to one of London's least busy terminuses, Euston.
Alexander is so in awe of HS2 that she appears to have reversed Sunak's bizarre insistence that new extension be privately financed. This will give Euston four to six extra platforms. It is simply astonishing expenditure, a staggering £6bn for a few platforms. You could rebuild London's most derelict hospitals with that. No one mentons that HS2 at current costs will pocket about £2,000 each from the average British taxpayer.
HS2's contractors were told that they would be reimbursed for all their costs, plus inflation plus profit. Typical of Whitehall project management, this was insane. It meant that absolutely nobody had an interest in restraining costs rather than inflating them. That is how the company's 'world class' bosses have long earned £400,000-£600,000 a year, while more than 40 senior staff earn over £150,000.
The result is that HS2's 30,000 staff, officials and consultants, its Whitehall civil servants, local councils and businesses, have formed a massive lobby for continuation. Johnson's Downing Street transport adviser, Andrew Gilligan, tells of officials who 'lied, covered up and fired whistle-blowers'. One whistleblower known to me felt as though he was working for the mafia. The lobby sent a deputation to the Guardian to explain to me why my opposition was so wrong. The former owner of the Euston site called the project a giant 'Ponzi scheme, a gravy train to nowhere'. And they all walk away with their pay, perks and honours intact. It is a classic of Britain's 'deep state' at work.
Alexander is now repeating the old ministerial mantra that the project will be fine if managed by her. It always starts with more reports. Alexander is now waiting for another Wild report. It follows the Oakervee review and countless others from Stephen Glaister, the National Audit Office and the public accounts committee. All warn of trouble ahead. All have been ignored.
The continued uncertainty over HS2 costs can only mean continued increases. The project is now way below normal Treasury value for money estimates, and survives only by the grace of politics. Its cancellation would of course cost more money. But of the currently assumed £100bn, only between £30bn and £40bn has been spent. There is still about £60bn needed for what is a purely political gesture of growth machismo.
Keir Starmer is fond these days of parroting Reform's leader, Nigel Farage. He should listen to what Farage said on Wednesday: 'Scrap HS2', and spend the money on something worthwhile.
Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist
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