The HS2 farrago shows we're a country that can't get its act together
In Monday's opening episode, Lamble began with perhaps the most damning thing of all. In 2009, the year HS2 first rumbled into life, the West Coast Main Line upgrade had finally finished – years late, billions over budget, with more money spent on compensation than on the actual infrastructure. In other words, the perfect manual for how not to run a railway project. HS2, as we all know too well by now, has made that project look like Swiss clockwork.
Lamble spoke to an impressive roster of those involved in HS2, from engineers to MPs, and found a project riven with division from the off, and one so in love with the idea of itself, it was incapable of seeing a yard in front of its face. Some of the details amounted to a national embarrassment: the budget updates tied doggedly to 2012 prices, key figures sacked for providing realistic costings (HS2 Ltd deny this), the wrong trains purchased, trees chopped down on land they didn't own, thousands of properties bought that they still don't know what to do with.
One key figure stated that the original budget (around £15bn – current estimates have it going northwards of £80bn) was drawn up when they knew 'three to four per cent of the facts' about the project. The use of guesstimates is stunning. According to the podcast, one necessary piece of land attached to a golf course was valued by HS2 at £3,800. They agreed to buy it for £7m. It's not so much a case of trying to work out who knew what – no one seemed to know anything. In 2014, when the first of the bills passed in parliament, the transport secretary Patrick McLoughlin believed that was tantamount to the planning application being approved. Since then, HS2 has required more than 8,000 further permissions from local councils and other agencies.
Yet for all we've completely ballsed it up, Lamble hits upon a key truth. The obsession with the cost and with the speed meant that HS2 had failed to tell the right story. As a result, said Lamble, 'the public got the impression we were about to spend billions just to knock 30 minutes off a trip to Birmingham'. In a country obsessed with the railways, we'd got the narrative wrong, failing to convince the nation that HS2 could be something discussed in 150 years the way we discuss the golden age of Victorian railways now. In 150 years, HS2 will certainly be discussed – as a prime example of the little country that couldn't.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Reuters
19 minutes ago
- Reuters
Trump says India trade agreement is close, Europe deal possible
WASHINGTON, July 16 (Reuters) - The United States is very close to a trade deal with India, while an agreement could possibly be reached with Europe as well, but it is too soon to say whether a deal can be agreed with Canada, President Donald Trump said in an interview aired on Real America's Voice on Wednesday. To press for what Trump views as better terms with trading partners and ways to shrink a huge U.S. trade deficit, his administration has been negotiating trade deals ahead of an August 1 deadline, when duties on most U.S. imports are due to rise again. "We're very close to India, and ... we could possibly make a deal with (the) EU," Trump said, when asked which trade deals were on the horizon. Trump's comments come as EU trade chief Maros Sefcovic was headed to Washington on Wednesday for tariff discussions, while an Indian trade delegation arrived in Washington on Monday for fresh talks. "(The) European Union has been brutal, and now they're being very nice. They want to make a deal, and it'll be a lot different than the deal that we've had for years," he added. Asked about the prospects of a deal with Canada, which like the EU, is readying countermeasures if talks with the U.S. fail to produce a deal, Trump said: "Too soon to say." His comment was in line with the assessment of Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, who said earlier on Wednesday that a deal that works for Canadian workers was not yet on the table. Trump also said he would probably put a blanket 10% or 15% tariff on smaller countries.
The Guardian
37 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Will Nigel Farage's attempt to copy and paste Trump's policies work in the UK?
A popular maxim on the American right is that politics is downstream from culture. In the UK, it increasingly feels like politics is simply downstream from the US. With Reform UK ascendant in the polls, Nigel Farage – officially MP for Clacton, unofficially Donald Trump's emissary to the UK – is setting the terms of the national conversation, and he is importing them directly from across the pond. Over the past few months, Reform has sought to launch 'Doge' initiatives (referencing Elon Musk's department of government efficiency), waged war on DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) employment schemes, and called for the UK government to embrace crypto and create a bitcoin digital reserve at the Bank of England, following Trump's lead. It seems the Brexiteers were right: Britain doesn't make anything any more – not even its own bogeymen. Reform's repeated attacks on DEI are particularly striking because DEI doesn't technically exist in the UK. The equivalent framework is called EDI (equality, diversity and inclusion), and it is nowhere near as prominent as Reform seems to think. At the national level, Reform has claimed that cutting such equality and diversity schemes could save central government £7bn a year – according to 2022-23 figures, the real figure is £27m. Farage nonetheless insists that the British left 'obsess about DEI and spend plenty of public money on it'. After Reform's success at the local elections in May, he warned that all those working in diversity for Reform-controlled councils 'better be seeking alternative careers very, very quickly'. But the sought-after image – woke council members walking out of county hall with their redundancy boxes while ordinary, hardworking Britons applaud the return to common sense – is unlikely to materialise. A recent investigation by the Guardian found that in Reform's 10 councils, the total number of jobs connected to equality and diversity amounts to fewer than five full-time positions and accounts for about 0.003% of their combined budget. Under Trump's presidency, Doge has vastly overestimated the scale of its government savings – in one notable instance it misfiled an $8m saving as an $8bn one – and DEI has been blamed for everything from a plane crash in Washington to wildfires in California to inflation. A sober assessment of the pros and cons of DEI initiatives – the benefits they can bring to companies, their approach to systemic inequalities that can be superficial box-ticking – has nothing to do with the rightwing backlash against them. Republicans aren't looking for alternative solutions, because attacking DEI gives them everything they need: a way to foment resentment against state bureaucracy, the left, marginalised groups and minorities – appealing to xenophobia and serving capitalist interests at the same time. Why ape US ideas so transparently, especially in a country where even many on the right are repulsed by Trump? One possible answer lies in semantics. Perhaps the hope is that DEI will sound like something new and scary to Britons who are no longer moved by mentions of previous bogeymen such as 'political correctness', 'the bureaucrats in Brussels' and 'the woke mob', just as Doge will sound slicker and more exciting than 'austerity' despite in practice meaning the same thing: stripping local councils down to their barest components – consistent with Westminster's orders for the past 15 years. But shiny US branding will not make cuts any easier. An analysis of Reform's 10 councils by PoliticsHome found that almost 80% of their combined spending is now taken up by social care and homelessness. Another explanation, however, is that Reform's rhetoric is the symptom rather than the cause of a broader Americanisation of the British right. It is telling that Farage's greatest asset in trying make DEI mean something has been GB News, itself a knockoff of Fox News, which has tirelessly warned of DEI's evils – in the NHS, the army, the civil service and so on. ('It's exasperating the number of hours I have wasted on various online 'training packages' on DEI topics,' an anonymous 'senior soldier' revealed in a GB News exclusive, giving Britons a sense of what's at stake.) GB News also recently announced plans to expand its coverage to the US with a nightly show about American politics from September. 'We've seen time and again this year that a decision made on one day in Washington DC is felt the next day in Washington, Tyne and Wear,' GB News's editorial director, Michael Booker, explained. Paul Marshall, the billionaire hedge fund manager who co-owns GB News, has deepened ties between the UK and US right through other ventures as well, such as UnHerd and the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship. Last year, after buying the Spectator, he also came close to purchasing the Telegraph with the help of Ken Griffin, an American billionaire who is one of the Republicans' biggest donors. Marshall's son Winston, a former banjoist for Mumford & Sons, is now a podcast host based in the US. At a recent press conference in Washington, he asked whether 'the Trump administration would consider asylum' for citizens affected by the UK's 'free speech issues'. Trump's press secretary said she would look into it. The special relationship forming between the UK and US right is tainted by the stark imbalances in wealth and power. Take away the vast wealth of its financial centre in London and the UK is poorer than each of America's 50 states. The attempts by the British right to import panic about DEI and dynamism through Doge reflect a desire for inclusion and imagining that the UK and the US are in it together. It's clear what Farage gets from this – the good graces of a US president who wants to be king and prizes sycophancy in his court above all – but the benefits to UK voters are naught. Farage has repeatedly declared his intention to give the British ruling classes a reality check through his success, implying that he alone knows what the UK wants. 'I don't think the Westminster politicians and journalists even get what's going on out there,' he said in a recent TikTok video. But the references to DEI and Doge should remind us that he hasn't a clue either. Samuel Earle is the author of Tory Nation: How One Party Took Over
The Independent
an hour ago
- The Independent
Tory ex-ministers defend record as pressure mounts after Afghan data leak
Tory ex-ministers have sought to defend their record amid mounting pressure over the Afghan data leak that resulted in an unprecedented superinjunction and an £850 million secret relocation scheme. Members of the previous administration are distancing themselves from the handling of a breach which saw a defence official release the details of nearly 19,000 people seeking to flee Kabul. Shadow justice secretary and former immigration minister Robert Jenrick said he first learned of the 2022 data breach after a legal gagging order had been put in place the following year. Former home secretary Suella Braverman said there is 'much more that needs to be said about the conduct of the MoD (Ministry of Defence), both ministers and officials' and that she was not involved in the superinjunction decision. Ex-veterans minister Johnny Mercer claimed he had 'receipts' regarding the previous government's actions in relation to Kabul but said it was 'absurd' to accuse him of failing to grasp the scale of the crisis. 'I know who is covering their tracks, and who has the courage to be honest,' he said. 'I would caution those who might attempt to rewrite history.' Thousands of people are being relocated to the UK as part of an £850 million scheme set up after the leak, which was kept secret as a result of a superinjunction imposed in 2023 which was only lifted on Tuesday. At Prime Minister's Questions, Sir Keir Starmer insisted there would be scrutiny of the decision, telling MPs: 'Ministers who served under the party opposite have serious questions to answer about how this was ever allowed to happen.' Former prime minister Liz Truss, who was foreign secretary at the time of the breach in February 2022, but a backbencher when the superinjunction was sought, said she was 'shocked' by the 'cover-up'. She said the revelations pointed to a 'huge betrayal of public trust' and 'those responsible in both governments and the bureaucracy need to be held to account'. Mr Mercer said: 'I've spilt my own blood fighting for a better Afghanistan, lost friends, fought to get operators out of the country and away from the Taliban, and visited hundreds of resettled families and hotels in the UK under direct commission from the previous prime minister after the schemes were dangerously failing. 'Others were with me in this process and we have all the receipts.' Shadow justice secretary Mr Jenrick said he had 'strongly opposed plans to bring over' thousands of Afghan nationals during 'internal government discussions in the short period before my resignation' in December 2023. 'I first learned of the data leak and plan to resettle people after the superinjunction was in place,' he said. 'Parliamentary privilege is not unlimited; I was bound by the Official Secrets Act.' Mr Jenrick said the secret scheme had been 'a complete disaster' and that the previous government 'made serious mistakes' but that 'thousands more (Afghan people) have come since Labour came to power'. The Commons Defence Committee will be setting out plans for an inquiry straight after the parliamentary recess in September. A dataset of 18,714 who applied for the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (Arap) scheme was released in February 2022 by a defence official who emailed a file outside authorised government systems. The Ministry of Defence only became aware of the blunder when excerpts from the dataset were posted anonymously on a Facebook group in August 2023, and a superinjunction was granted at the High Court in an attempt to prevent the Taliban from finding out about the leak. Then-defence secretary Sir Ben Wallace said he had applied for a four-month standard injunction shortly before leaving office but, on September 1 2023, when Grant Shapps took the role, the government was given a superinjunction. Mr Shapps has not yet publicly commented on the revelations. Sir Ben has insisted he makes 'no apology' for applying for the initial injunction, saying it was motivated by the need to protect people in Afghanistan whose safety was at risk. The leak led to the creation of a secret Afghan relocation scheme – the Afghanistan Response Route – in April 2024. The scheme is understood to have cost about £400 million so far, with a projected final cost of about £850 million. A total of about 6,900 people are expected to be relocated by the end of the scheme. The official responsible for the email error was moved to a new role but not sacked. The superinjunction was in place for almost two years, covering Labour and Conservative governments. Tory leader Kemi Badenoch has apologised on behalf of the Conservatives for the leak, telling LBC: 'On behalf of the government and on behalf of the British people, yes, because somebody made a terrible mistake and names were put out there … and we are sorry for that.'
