Labour had the chance to finally kill off HS2. Instead, it’s throwing more money into the pit | Simon Jenkins

Rachel Reeves didn’t utter a word about this disaster in her spending review. Yet there’s a colossal £25bn more earmarked for it Where was the elephant in the room? It received not a mention in the spending review. In among the hospitals and schools, the highways and the prisons, the great beast wandered, a ghostly presence cursing all from whom it stole.I found it in a Whitehall handout, sandwiched somewhere between Leeds station and a Welsh level crossing. The transport department did not even include it in its railway plans for the parliament. It was relegated, as if an extinct species, to just one short sentence. It said it would spend £25.3bn “to address longstanding delivery challenges” for HS2. Is it a train or not a train?Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

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