The vanity line

Jeremy Corbyn may not be right about many things, but when he sat on the floor of a train, hoping to raise awareness about overcrowding, he was at least on to something. Of course, in classic Corbyn style, he proved to have ignored reality to make his point: there were plenty of seats on that particular train. It was nonetheless a point worth making. Millions of passengers jostle for standing space every day; Britain’s rail system is in urgent need of help. And there is apparently money to be spent. It just won’t be going on the most overcrowded lines.

Instead, the cash is destined for High Speed 2 — one of those mysterious vanity projects that refuses to go away even though common sense begs it to. Polls show the vast majority of us are against it. I have yet to meet a single person who minds one bit that the travel time between London and Birmingham is 82 minutes rather than 55, as it would be with a new line. The original estimated cost was £30 billion. It has since risen to an astonishing £56 billion, far more expensive than any other high-speed rail line in the world, ever.

But the more the cost rises, the more prime ministers and their secretaries of state for transport seem to love it. It’s a cross-party darling: everyone’s favourite ego-trip. First the New Labour transport minister Andrew Adonis pushed the idea, captivated by the notion of European-style high-speed rail; then George Osborne coveted it after taking a trip on a super-fast maglev train in Japan in 2006 and feeling embarrassed that Britain was being left behind. Philip Hammond supported HS2, allocating £1 billion to be spent on preparations for it; Justine Greening and Patrick McLoughlin nurtured it; and now Chris Grayling has said he has ‘no plans to back away from the HS2 project’.