The face said it all. As Rachel Reeves listed the infrastructure projects being funded by her first budget, she could not even say how much the biggest one would cost. She announced a £22.6bn cash injection for the NHS in England over two years and an extra £2.3bn a year in core funding for English schools. Television showed the relevant ministers cheering to the skies. But when she mentioned a certain railway tunnel from Old Oak Common to Euston in London, the transport secretary, Louise Haigh, was not cheering. We saw only a jaw tightening into what looked like a grimace.
HS2, the greatest white elephant in British history, has lived to fight another day. Once costed at £30bn and then soaring to £100bn, even stripped of its northern limbs it is currently expected to cost £67bn. A year ago Rishi Sunak added himself to the list of shame of prime ministers who lacked the courage to kill it. But he did stop the building of the London link from Old Oak Common to Euston. The cost of the Euston terminus alone had ballooned from £2.6bn to £4.8bn. It was clearly out of control and the London end of the project was in effect banned.
