Instead of killing HS2 bit by bit, ministers should just put it out of its misery

‘To its backers, HS2 has become like Brexit, the mistake that dare not speak its name.’ Construction of an HS2 tunnel as it leaves London through the Colne Valley. Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian

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.