How Peter Mandelson’s HS2 intervention will change the debate – and how it won’t

Peter Mandelson’s surprise rejection of high-speed rail in this morning’s FT is another sign that the wheels are coming off this project. But while the project’s critics on the backbenches – particularly those on the Tory side such as Cheryl Gillan and Michael Fabricant who are campaigning vociferously against the plan – will be thrilled, the continuing cross-party consensus means you won’t hear Cameron being probed on this at Prime Minister’s Questions, for instance, or Maria Eagle castigating Patrick McLoughlin at the next departmental question time in the Commons.

But Mandelson’s concerns about the project are about its spiralling cost, not the impact on one MP’s constituency (or their majority, for that matter). And they underline that ministers’ desire to win the global race can often, in their zeal to show they are running that race, mean they fail to work out whether the projects they’re using aren’t the right ones.