Depleted and unwanted, HS2 hurtles on as Johnson’s £100bn vanity project | Simon Jenkins

It has cost the taxpayer billions without a mile of track being laid – and it won’t even go north of Crewe

Britain’s new high-speed railway will not – repeat: not – get to the north of England. It will go back and forth from London to the Midlands and its chief beneficiaries will be London commuters. All else is political spin.

This became certain last week as the government’s internal major projects authority declared phase two of the HS2 project, to Manchester and Leeds, effectively dead. While ...