Tory minister: HS2 is ‘effectively dead’

Why was David Cameron so lukewarm in his endorsement of HS2 at PMQs today? (In response to a question about the project’s future, he offered, ‘I believe we should go ahead with HS2’, which is rather than different to asserting that it will go ahead.) The project is – as one Tory minister has told The Spectator – ‘effectively dead’. Ross Clark has investigated why in the cover story of tomorrow’s issue. Here’s what he found:

1). George Osborne has turned against it. The chancellor and Tories’ strategic brain was once HS2’s biggest cheerleader, but experience of office has made him realise that Britain’s limited airport capacity is a bigger threat to economic growth. (Was this behind Cameron’s refusal at PMQs to rule out a U-turn over expansion at Heathrow?)  

2). The replacement of Philip Hammond by Justine Greening as Transport Secretary. Hammond, like his former boss Osborne, was a believer; but Greening was never convinced, and she listens to her parliamentary colleagues’ reservations sympathetically.