Eleven years after it was first launched, the government has given the “green light” to HS2.
That’s the preferred nomenclature, anyway. It is, at a conservative estimate, the eighth green light given to HS2 since it was first proposed by Andrew Adonis, Labour’s then transport secretary, in 2009. Back then, it was going to reach Birmingham by 2026.
Quite how green this latest light is, we cannot fully know. As Boris Johnson stood at the dispatch box of the House of Commons, he referred to it only as “high speed rail”, opting not to use the term HS2. This was unfortunate, in its way. At least the term HS2 partly conceals the unfortunate words “high” and “speed” when applied to a project that has now been 11 years and a few tens of billions of pounds getting started.
Yet Johnson opted for this alternative language partly because he was about to give the company, HS2 Limited, an absolute kicking for a litany of cock-ups for which central government is responsible.
It also serves as a reminder that before HS2 came HS1. That’ll be the super high-speed train that currently links Britain and France, the one which Boris Johnson’s government is currently in the business of slowing down in order to carry out customs checks.
In his despatch box routine, Johnson did his bit about “northern powerhouse rail”, about “levelling up”, about shaving “50 minutes off the journey time to Glasgow” – a city which, by the time this train line is opened, stands a very high chance of being in another country.
What also went without mention, on the High Speed One front, is that just outside central London is a train station called Stratford International that has been open for 10 years, yet still no international trains stop at it. Stratford International was built so that fast, international trains could go direct from Manchester and Liverpool straight to Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam and beyond, without even passing through central London.
But that’s not happened. Why? Because for Stratford International to work, the UK would need to be in the EU’s borderless travel area (otherwise, people who just wanted to go between, say, London and Manchester would need their passports) – yet because the UK has convinced itself that we’re downright better than France, Germany, Italy, Spain and everywhere in between, we can’t possibly permit ourselves to be. And Boris Johnson – the great builder, the great doer, the would-be pioneer – is the single person most responsible for the greatest backwards leap his country has ever or will ever take.
Still, this was, we were told, a “once in a generation” decision. If anything, this was underselling the drama of the moment. Having been first proposed in one generation and taken in another, it is in fact a “0.5 times in a generation” decision, but that doesn’t have quite the same ring to it.
There’s also the fact it concerns a project that will take more than a generation to complete. If you were in your thirties back in 2009, and you’re lucky enough to ride HS2 in your lifetime, you’ll be a pensioner (I use the term pensioner in the loosest possible sense, of course. As if you’ll actually have a pension. I simply mean “very old”).
Is it also possible to ponder whether the bold solutions of 2009 will solve the problems of 2040 (at the very earliest). “Our ancestors looked to the future of transport and they made it happen!” thundered Boris Johnson at the dispatch box, doing his very best impression of himself (if you think you’re tired of this schtick, imagine how he feels; he’s been at it for decades). It was not immediately clear which ancestors he had in mind, but whichever they were, it’s clear they lived in a different world to ours.
The world’s current transport pioneers are dreaming of hyperloops and driverless cars. They work for companies like Google, which is 22 years old. If they get their way, it will be significantly fewer than 20 more years before small, green, almost motorbike-like self-driving electric vehicles are travelling bumper-to-bumper at 200 miles an hour. In such a world, only a sucker would want to travel by high-speed train.
Still, only a sucker would be taken in by Boris Johnson. So we can’t say we don’t deserve our fate.
