Choose your expression: ‘stuck between a rock and a hard place’; ‘I wouldn’t start from here if I were you’; or simply ‘this is the biggest omnishambles in history’.

All these apply to HS2 as Louise Haigh, the Secretary of State for Transport, attempts to come up with a coherent strategy for a project that has now run for 15 years and has worked its way through around £35 billion – but is still only less than half-completed. Worse, on its way it has shed most of its sections, such as running to Manchester and Leeds or connecting with HS1, that would at least have made the end product a worthwhile addition to the country’s railway infrastructure.

Certainly, completing these two sections will at least invest some ultimate purpose in this deranged project

Instead, we now have a 135-mile-long line that has been dubbed the Acton to Aston shuttle, starting some five miles from the centre of London and ending up a mile from Birmingham’s New Street station, necessitating a tram ride to connect with it. In this form, few people will use the service, given it will cost more and not save any time city when travelling between two city centres. The cost is now accepted to be in the order of £100 billion and according to my sources will not open until at least 2033 rather than the originally planned mid-2020s – and that’s if no new problems arise. There are already rumours that major previously undiscovered gas and water mains on the site marked for the........

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