Hs2

Monday

Isabel Hardman

Ed Balls’ credibility mission

The never-ending slew of messages from Labour figures about the party’s ‘clear’ position on high-speed rail was part of an attempt by the party to show that it is a credible opposition that scrutinises policies rather than blindly supports them. But this got rather confusing last week as each ‘clear position’ was a little different to the last. So today Ed Balls tried to set out Labour’s clear position more clearly when he spoke to the CBI conference. And it turns out that this position is the same as it was at the party’s conference. Here is the section on the new line in the Shadow Chancellor’s speech: ‘Labour supports

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Cameron aims to set agenda again on HS2

Even though a significant number of Conservative MPs oppose the new high speed rail line, the focus for the past few weeks has been on what Labour plans to do about it, with a new ‘clear’ position coming from the party almost every day. Labour support now looks a little more likely given the language used by Mary Creagh at the report stage and third reading of the preparation bill last week. And while the fuss about Labour has died down a little, David Cameron is wisely seeking to wrestle back the agenda on this project from the Opposition. In a speech today to the CBI, Cameron will use one

Friday

Fraser Nelson

Northern voters turn against HS2

When George Osborne first announced his plans for high speed rail, I was all for it. I’ve spent too much of my life on broken-down trains between Inverkeithing and London – and, like many Scots, resented the way that most transport money seemed to be spent in the imperial capital. As I say in my Telegraph column today, the key to staying happy about HS2 is not to think about it much further: don’t contemplate the costs, don’t ask if transport can be helped in other ways. This is what Westminster is doing: all its parties have signed up to the project. They won’t have a proper debate about it.

Sebastian Payne

Nigel Farage wins The Spectator’s HS2 debate — but will the green belt be destroyed? (with audio)

HS2 was given an emphatic vote of no confidence at The Specator’s debate last night, where Matthew Parris and Nigel Farage led their respective teams into battle. This was the debate that Westminster will not have (all parties are officially agreed on the project) which is all the better for us. Farage claimed he loves infrastructure projects in general but hates HS2 as it’s a Westminster vanity project. Farage attempted to marry Ukip’s (inconsistent) support for high speed rail with his ardent opposition to HS2: ‘There are so many things we could do. And yes, let’s look at the Great Central railway project…we are not luddites, we are not backwards. I want

Thursday

Charles Moore

Charles Moore’s notes: It’s great there’s a World Islamic Economic Forum — now can we have a Jewish one?

As I write, the World Islamic Economic Forum is opening in London, the first time it has been held in a non-Muslim country. David Cameron boasts that investors will now be able to buy sharia-compliant British gilts. If the forum helps Muslim countries share their commercial expertise with one another and the rest of us, well and good. But should modes of global commerce be defined by religious allegiance? What would the conspiracy theorists say about a World Jewish Economic Forum? How would Saudi Arabia — or even Dubai — react to the suggestion of a World Christian Economic Forum taking place within its borders?  And once it is officially proclaimed a

The Spectator

High-speed fail

A year ago the electoral strategies of the two main parties seemed set. The Conservatives would stand as the party of prudence, claiming to have saved Britain from a Greek-style meltdown through austerity measures which, though painful at the time, had eventually borne fruit in the shape of a private sector-led recovery. Labour, meanwhile, would stand as the party for public investment, promising to repair what it saw as the damage wrought by cuts. Since then, things have got better for the Tories than they could have imagined. Not only did a threatened triple-dip recession fail to materialise, but revisions to economic data concluded that Britain did not even suffer a

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Whips declare victory in HS2 vote

As expected, the government’s high-speed rail preparation bill cleared the Commons this evening, with 350 votes in favour and just 34 against. Only 18 of those were Conservative MPs, which deputy chief whip Greg Hands seems very keen indeed to highlight (see here and here), perhaps to suggest that he’s already working his magic in his new job. But we reported earlier that one of the whips’ strategies was to let any possible rebel have the day off to spend with their children over half term. How family-friendly. What was of more interest was Labour’s position before, during and after the debate. Summing up, Mary Creagh argued that ‘it is we on this side of the House who

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Labour announces its ‘message’ on HS2 is clear… but is it?

It’s a bad sign when a party has to insist that its position on a big policy is clear, but that’s what Labour has done this morning, with a statement from Shadow Transport Secretary Mary Creagh marking the start of the HS2 preparation bill report stage and third reading: ‘Labour supports HS2 because we must address the capacity problems that mean thousands of commuters face cramped, miserable journeys into Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds and London. However, Government mismanagement has pushed up costs. Our message to David Cameron is clear. Get a grip on this project, get control of the budget and get it back on track.’ Perhaps Labour’s message to Cameron

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Tory MPs: here’s how you can get half-term off with your kids

Don’t expect this afternoon’s vote on HS2 to be the biggest insurrection of all time: it is the preparation bill and there are a number of reasons why MPs who could yet oppose the project won’t cause trouble this afternoon. One is the rather technical reason that some want to support this legislation in order to secure adequate compensation for constituents whose property will be blighted until an alternative route is chosen or all three parties agree to invest in existing lines. Another is that some remain to be convinced of the case for the line: the whips have been working rather hard on this, I hear. But the third

Charles Moore Charles Moore

Why Labour is getting cold feet about HS2

People express surprise that Labour, having invented HS2, is now getting cold feet about it. But, as with rising energy prices, it is precisely because it invented the policy that it knows how expensive it is. Labour is like a big bank which went bust in the 2008 crisis but has somehow managed to continue trading without being either rescued or wound up. It knows how badly it did, and what a terrible state it is still in, and keeps hoping (with surprising success so far) that people won’t notice. Psychologically and politically, it is important for it to transfer blame for its own actions on to the coalition. Then it

Wednesday

Freddy Gray

HS2 won’t solve the North’s economic problems – it might make them worse

As Isabel says, the HS2 brigade are on a roll. Not only are Labour now under serious pressure over the party’s support or otherwise for the project, each day brings a new headline about the advantages of high speed rail. Today, the money quote comes from David Prout, the HS2 director general. He says that, without high speed rail, London would become ‘a global city surrounded by rust belt’. The Times leader page dutifully regurgitates Westminster’s fodder: ‘If the map of Britain is not to become a literal illustration of Disraeli’s two nations, the tracks must be laid.’ At first this is a compelling argument. It seems obvious that a quicker link between capital Birmingham and Manchester

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Labour: no change on HS2 position

Yesterday marked the first reasonably good day that agitators for HS2 have had in a while. Northern business leaders started the day with a call to David Cameron to hold firm on the project, followed by Labour leader of Birmingham City Council Sir Albert Bore warning Labour of ‘protracted public conflict’ in the run-up to the general election if it continued to ‘put out such a negative message on HS2’. This morning’s Guardian story that Labour will support HS2 provided the project’s chairman Sir David Higgins is given the power to bring down its costs appears to be damage limitation. But party sources are today rowing back from that line,

Tuesday

John Redwood

Do we really need HS2? I’m not convinced

The Secretary of State for Transport asked for my views on the capacity argument for HS2. I thought I would share them with you. To establish that HS2 is needed on capacity grounds the government has to be able to demonstrate three main points. Firstly, that the current West Coast Main Line (WCML) is full or nearly full. Secondly that there are no easier or cheaper ways of adding significant capacity to the WCML or providing an alternative to tackle any future capacity problems. Thirdly, that the high forecasts of likely passenger growth and use of HS2 are realistic. I remain to be persuaded on each of these three matters. The government

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Ministers need to re-energise wavering Tories on HS2 as well as Labour

Ministers’ attention is now firmly focused on arguing that to abandon HS2 would be a sign that Labour is ‘playing politics with prosperity’, as Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin is set to say later today, or ‘abandoning the North’. Yesterday the Prime Minister slipped in a joke about Ed Balls being absent from the Commons because he was trying to work out what his party’s policy should be on the new line. Today Julian Smith is batting for CCHQ, predicting that ‘if Labour oppose HS2 they’ll be dismissing the long-term future of the country for a short-term political gamble’. As James explained last night, this is all part of an attempt

Monday

James Forsyth

The government tries to ‘smoke Labour out’ on HS2

The government’s approach to the HS2 debate has changed. Up until recently, government sources would wave away the suggestion that Labour might withdraw its support for the project. They’d point to Andrew Adonis and his influence on Ed Miliband to explain why Ed Balls’s doubts about it didn’t matter that much. But this has now changed. They’ve now decided, in the words of one Number 10 figure, that they need to ‘smoke Labour out on the issue’. Over the next few weeks, we’ll see the Tories trying to put more and more pressure on Labour to say whether or not they’ll back it. Number 10 is acutely aware that, at

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Can you trust a government report on the alternatives to HS2?

As Britain’s train lines suffer in the wake of St Jude, the political storm over high speed rail continues to rage. The government and Labour are playing footsie with each other. Labour’s somewhat left-field idea to re-open the Grand Central Railway — at an estimated cost of £6 billion, compared to £43 billion for HS2 — has been matched by a fear-mongering government statements about the implications of not building a high speed rail line. The coalition’s ‘updated business case’ claims that, if Britain did not pursue the high-speed solution, a ‘patch-and-mend job’ would be necessary, which would be almost as expensive and mean 14 years of weekend closures. It

Sunday

Isabel Hardman

‘Abandoning the North’: the new emotional HS2 debate

David Cameron insists that a project like high-speed rail needs cross-party support. That may well be sensible, but his desire for Labour to retain its support for the new line is founded more on the necessity of getting the legislation through Parliament, rather than a great belief in parties working together on the big things. The fact is that Cameron needs Labour votes because yet again he cannot rely on his own party, the party of government, to push the bills through. Labour obviously scents blood, not just because there’s sport to be had in making a Prime Minister squirm and plead for the Opposition’s votes, but also because dropping

Thursday

Sebastian Payne

The HS2 fight back begins next week. But will it work?

Ministers are increasingly aware of an uphill struggle on HS2. Next week, they will try to make the case for the line again, in the face of increasing opposition, with the publication of the Department of Transport’s strategic case paper, which will respond to criticisms from the Public Accounts Committee and National Audit Office on the viability of the project. Giving up on trying to win the economic case for HS2 (which has been widely lambasted), the government hopes to turn the tide by instead focusing on the capacity arguments. As James reported last month, the DfT will attempt to shift the HS2 debate to why we need a new

Andrew Bridgen

HS2 is a grandstand project – and the sums just don’t add up

HS2 is a solution looking for a problem. Since its conception, HS2 has been a tale of shape shifting as first it was about time, then about bridging the north south divide, then about capacity before we are told it is simply the right thing to do. The reason the argument is shifting is because it is built of a poor business case which when scrutinised falls apart and reveals a tide of evasive evidence. Take for instance the principle argument when the HS2 scheme was unveiled by Labour. It was that 20 minutes could be saved on the journey time between London and Birmingham. Based on this, for Phase

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

My £30k alternative to HS2

Someone in New York told me this story. I admit that I didn’t believe it when I first heard it. But a little online research seems to confirm that it is true. It concerns a group of people who had bought early versions of the Tesla Model S, a $90,000 high-performance electric car much loved by Silicon Valley’s rich set. The earlier versions of these cars behaved slightly differently from a standard petrol vehicle. In particular there was no ‘creep’. For the benefit of European readers irrationally wedded to the stick shift, I should explain that ‘creep’ is a feature of almost all cars with automatic transmission. It means that