I look forward to using my pensioner’s pass on HS2 – and I’ve spotted the people to run it

Investing £33 billion in HS2 — £46 billion if you accept the Taxpayers’ Alliance’s calculation — won’t boost us out of this triple dip, but it might ease the one after next, early in the reign of hugely popular, three-times-married King Harry, in whose favour his elder brother will abdicate, Dutch-style, after his 50th birthday. It’s a constant theme of this column that all prediction, even one year ahead, is (in Sir Mervyn King’s phrase) ‘a mug’s game’: every element of that first sentence may turn out to be bunkum. Even so, the announcement of second-phase HS2 routes to Manchester and Leeds, with stations for Derby, Nottingham and Sheffield, makes a far more compelling case than the first-phase promise of a few minutes off the London-to-Birmingham run in exchange for dynamiting the Chilterns.

And that case deserves support without excessive scrutiny of the numbers attached, which constitute little more than a ‘Yes, Minister’ exercise in arse-covering.