I don’t know about you, but I’m suffering from chronic metaphor fatigue. There is nothing that goes horribly wrong, falls apart, arrives late, costs too much, delays millions and undermines our sanity that cannot be co-opted as a metaphor for Britain’s dysfunction in 2023. Everyone wants to control the narrative these days: corporations, football managers, reality TV stars. The Government’s attempts to control the narrative have — shall we say — not been entirely successful, in that the narrative about how well Britain is run is less a well-drilled PR machine and more an escaped pack of hyenas. Welcome to the United Kingdom, land of blatant symbolism.
HS2 takes the award for best all-rounder. It’s the Jude Bellingham of national decline metaphors, in that it’s got a bit of everything. Woefully behind schedule, wildly over-budget, subject to the vicissitudes of poor leadership and indecision, HS2 has achieved the spectacular feat of being the high-tech railway to link London with the north that will no longer be going to the north. Or indeed London.
