Train wreck: HS2 destroyed the countryside I love

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Melissa Kite has narrated this article for you to listen to.

When I drive to see my parents in the once-peaceful farming country where I grew up, it is a strange, bittersweet experience. The car journey takes me through places I ought to recognise but I don’t any more, because the green fields of Warwickshire, the villages and the farms, are scarred by the tortuous works of HS2.

The distinctive red earth is laid bare for mile upon mile as the bulldozers do their worst. Rows of cottages and entire villages lie deserted, testimony to the billions already spent. As I drive along the main Banbury to Coventry road, I see mountains of earth piled high as flyovers take shape. I stare at this curiously outdated project – old hat both in terms of the controversy and the purpose it was meant to have. It seems to me that the works advance only about a few inches every time I drive up there.

A high-speed line has, for many years, been yesterday’s answer to yesterday’s problem. It was outmoded when the Tories backed the idea at their 2008 conference: the speedy trains to Manchester and Leeds would cost just £16 billion, it was said, and be ready by 2027. That money has been spent, but not an inch of track has been laid. The budget is closer to £100 billion and the deadline is some time in the 2040s.

But it’s not just that. Lockdown accelerated home-working, so commuter trains from Manchester and Leeds are already arriving in London full of empty seats. It is so old-fashioned and pointless – the idea of paying billions so businessmen can get to a meeting a few minutes quicker – that the main puzzle is why Rishi Sunak has not just cut his losses and called the whole thing off, rather than half of it, from Birmingham northwards.