In December of this year, so we were told, the first phase of an ambitious and ground-breaking transport project, which will deliver untold benefits to the people of the United Kingdom, will come into operation. It is the inception of a network that its architect proclaimed as “the union railway, uniting England and Scotland, north and south, richer and poorer parts of our country, sharing wealth and opportunity, pioneering a fundamentally better Britain”.

I, for one, can’t wait. Sadly, this is but a mirage. Because the first phase of this wonderful, forward-looking, exciting and vital element of our national infrastructure won’t actually be arriving as scheduled this year. The Government is sorry to announce that the high-speed train expected at Euston Station in late 2026 will unfortunately be 13 years late. This is due to planning issues, empty promises, political volatility, hopeless mismanagement and, as we discovered yesterday, too much rain on the line.

It was Lord Adonis who, as Labour’s transport secretary in 2009, made that bold claim about a “union railway”. HS2, as it was more prosaically called, was a plan to connect London, Birmingham and the North to........

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