In defence of HS2

Planning and execution have been pure Theresa May, but the principle is right

Boris Johnson’s appointment of Dominic Cummings as his special adviser has caused much vitriol. But far less noted, and far more worthy of criticism, is his decision to make Andrew Gilligan his adviser on transport. Gilligan, a dogmatic opponent of HS2, will insist on it being cancelled — despite the £4bn in costs already incurred. Given that Boris and plenty of his Cabinet are also long-standing critics of the line, chances are that Gilligan will have his way.

Why? Because cancelling HS2 would save Boris money and appease NIMBY, liberal, Green and Remain opinion. It would satisfy saloon-bar debaters who see in every megaproject simply politicians’ vanity, or, worse, male politicians’ testosterone. Such a move would be eye-catching, and appear no-nonsense, decisive. All good for a beleaguered Boris.

In fact, HS2 is a case study in both strong and weak arguments on both sides of an issue. It is also a case study in how, around the bear-pit that passes for modern politics, the need is for discrimination about the rationales offered, rather than a mad rush to extremes.

So yes, the original Labour Government proposal for HS2, made in 2010 by the now-discredited Lord Adonis, was founded on environmental grounds that were always flimsy. Certainly, too, the cost-benefit analysis justifying HS2, conducted by the most-fined accountancy firm in Britain, KPMG, was ridiculous. And yes, attempts to justify the initiative in terms of closing the North-South economic divide overstated the advantages transport could by itself bring to long-neglected regions, while understating the problems of overcrowding, 40-year-old rolling stock, unreliability and bad connectivity in the North.

Other counter-arguments also have a basis. Given the past decade’s diminution of democracy in Britain, the peremptory handling of properties in the way of the line – first business- or home-owners are served with a Compulsory Purchase Order, only much later do they get compensation – can be no surprise. And given the general financialisation of the British economy, the boondoggle characteristics of HS2 can also no surprise: it has been a gravy-train for lawyers, property sharks, bean-counters, architects, consultants and planners. As is well known, much has been spent with hardly a sleeper laid, yet top HS2 execs have come, gone, and cashed out handsomely.

Still more counter-arguments, however, are very weak. Couldn’t videoconferencing be a substitute for HS2, which is principally aimed at business? Given the uselessness of British telecommunications infrastructure, that fails to convince. Seeing that it involves funds to the tune of £2bn a year, wouldn’t it be better to make simple Old Oak Common in west London, rather than complicated Euston station, the capital’s terminus for the Birmingham-to-London Phase One of the project? Well, the site at OOC is already being cleared; but set in the context of, say, UK annual defence expenditure of £37.8bn and rising, to plump for the west London option amounts to a pretty desperate logic – and the same applies to cutting costs by cutting HS2’s maximum speed from 360kph to 300kph.

In fact, as spiked has consistently argued, we need both HS2 and Northern Powerhouse Rail (NPR), aka HS3. We also need London termini both at Euston and at OOC. On top of that, we need better conventional rail, road and air links throughout the UK; and we should certainly consider and start experimenting with 600-800kph magnetic levitation, or 460kph hyperloop, as alternatives. The rot has gone on long enough, and, with better national priorities and plenty of judicious redundancies around transport’s and especially HS2’s hangers-on, the money needed to bring Britain into the 21st century in mobility can be found.

In its damning recent assessment of the costs and sheer inertia that have surrounded HS2, the House of Lords’ Economic Affairs Committee is actually rueful that the system ‘will be faster than any railway operates in the world at present’ – while at the same time insisting that the final decision to proceed with the project should, of course, await ‘a new appraisal of the business case’ for it. This posture completely sums up the risk-obsessed mentality of the British bourgeoisie: don’t go too fast, and make sure you delay things enough to allow suits to put their noses in the trough yet another time. Naturally, the Labour Party also favours delay: Shadow Transport Secretary Andy McDonald has repeated Labour’s call for HS2 to be subjected to an independent ‘peer review’.

One does not need to be a nationalist to support a rail-line that’s the fastest in the world. It is not impulsive to protest that London to Birmingham in 2026, Birmingham to Crewe in 2027, Birmingham to Manchester and Leeds in 2033 and on up to Scotland at some indefinite time after that is a grindingly slow schedule. So if and when Boris cancels HS2, we will know that his stated ambitions for the country are mere braggadocio. Such a move would also expose his talk about devolution and the indivisible unity of Scotland with England as just that – talk. No wonder, though he has asked for a quickish review of HS2, Boris has also admitted that he would ‘hesitate for a long time’ before thinking about scrapping it.

That kind of hesitation, we can live with.