In giving the go ahead to the project the then Chancellor, George Osbourne, promised us a high-speed line between London, Birmingham, Leeds, Manchester and Sheffield with trains travelling at up to 248mph. There would be connections to Heathrow and potentially to the Channel Tunnel. The cost was to be a mere £32.7 billion.

Despite repeated warnings that costs were being “actively misrepresented”, runaway costs, delays and routes being axed means that today, what remains is little more than a skeleton of the original design that is essentially a useless section of high-speed track to Birmingham, on which trains will barely reach top speed. Runing from outside of central London to Birmingham, costing the taxpayer what may be as much as £100 Billion, when there is already an award winning line that runs from central London (Marylebone) to Birmingham (Snow Hill) taking 2 hours.

Last week Heidi Alexander, the transport secretary, announced that a root and branch review of the whole project by the latest Chief Executive, Mark Wild (who took over in December 2024), has found matters nothing short of “appalling” with Wild concluding “in no uncertain terms, the overall project with respect to cost, schedule and scope is unsustainable”.

Alexander said: “I see no route by which trains can be running by 2033 as planned. Wild reveals costs will continue to increase if not taken in hand, further outstripping the budget set by the previous government. And he cannot be certain that all cost pressures have yet been identified.”