Here’s a great idea: we’ll build a brand new railway network, specifically to provide much faster north to south of the country links but also because the existing network and tracks are all Victorian and beaten to shit by a century of abuse and neglect, bit like the Royal family. So we need to replace and might as well use the high-speed tracks and infrastructure, brilliant, just a snip at 37 bil, to run from Euston to Birmingham, Manchester, Crewe, Leeds, the Northeast and eventually, even to Scotland. Easier, faster transport to bring north and south together, seamlessly and speedily and… lots of other things-ly. We’re ‘levelling up!!!!’

That was 15 years ago. Now the price has risen to somewhere between 120 and 200 billion lots of people see it as a ‘vanity project’ when we need money to stop refugees from dying, children from stabbing each other, Ukrainians to have all the bombs they need and to have a few bob left over to provide medical treatments for the 2 million people waiting for appointments. So Rishi Sunak, never one to shy away from making changes-which-look-like-u-turns-but-aren’t-u-turns, issued a statement last week, when questioned about HS2. He said:

“Naaaaah, fuck dat, do we really want all those northerners in the capital? Thousands a day arriving at high speed. They’ll clog up the Euston Road. And no-one wants to go to Manchester, do they? I mean, we promised a link between ‘north and south’, well Birmingham’s north enough, innit? Feels like it on the train there. Then we don’t have to bother linking it up with Crewe or Leeds either; a win-win. By the time any of that might happen Scotland will have long since devolved, separated and lost its first war to the French. Let them build their own fucking trains. An’ while we’re at it, I don’t want Euston becoming South, South Manchester. So we’ll stop the trains in the middle of West London’s industrial wasteland, just over by Wormwood Scrubbs, a place so unappealing them northerners will get straight back on the next train north.

It will still be called ‘HS2’ but will now be billed as ‘the absolutely fastest way to get from Old Oak Common to Birmingham, EVER!!!’, that should win votes.

Happy Monday

A xxxx