A forensic look at how HS2—once pitched as a flagship for regional growth—has been chopped, delayed and over budget. We explore why Birmingham is bearing the cost, how political meddling has derailed progress, and whether Labour’s reset can salvage anything real.
00:00HHS2 was never just a train line, it was sold as a symbol of national ambition, promising faster connections, better jobs and a more balanced economy.
00:11But what started as a bold plan has become a case study in political drift. Delies, cancellations and ballooning costs have turned what was meant to be a boost for Birmingham into a burden.
00:22To understand how we got here, I spoke to Dr Steve McCabe, who's been tracking HHS2 from the beginning.
00:29So we're in the sort of, if you like, the worst of all worlds, and of course we're now being told that there's no certainty of what it's going to cost.
00:37Although many speculate, it could easily be over 100 billion pounds, so that's a lot of money, that's 12 noughts.
00:47So a thousand billion pounds or a thousand, thousand million pounds if you want to, so lots and lots of money to create a sort of a leak that's only just over a hundred or so miles to sort of two cities that have got pretty good connections already.
01:03So where we go from here, who knows?
01:07After the coalition, Theresa May and Boris Johnson took the HS2 baton.
01:11Johnson first dismissed it as a white elephant, but then said he backed it while quietly killing the Northern Legs in 2021.
01:19That spin over substance. Big promises for headlines, but no long haul delivery.
01:24Birmingham has been stuck in the middle. Building works started, but the key extensions were chopped.
01:29What they've done in terms of cutting the Northern Legs is, you know, that's the sort of blow to Birmingham.
01:35And what we need to be is, if you like, an intersection between the sort of the North and the South.
01:40So we shall sort of see. But there's a lot of uncertainty about this sort of project.
01:45And it's a few moments ago, you know, it's going to be a long, long time, you know, well into the next decade, if not towards the sort of the latter ends,
01:54when we sort of see sort of fruition. And as to the final cost, yeah, well, who knows?
01:59By 2023, what was left of HS2 took another hit. The Manchester leg was cancelled under Rishi Sunak,
02:05who claimed the money would be reinvested in local transport. But that promise raised more eyebrows than confidence.
02:11The project's costs had already tripled. Completion dates kept drifting into the next decade.
02:17For Birmingham, that meant years of noise and disruption, with no guarantee the benefits will ever arrive.
02:23If HS2 is sort of running, people probably won't give it a sort of second thought, because of course, it will be sort of in history.
02:29And there is no doubt that sort of in the past, when grand schemes have been conceived, you know,
02:35such as the original sort of London underground network, you know, that was seen as expensive.
02:41But of course, it's absolutely sort of vital to capital.
02:44You know, I think the sort of the difficulty is that sort of that the governments and political parties have been so chastened by HS2,
02:52that they'll sort of think twice before ever sort of doing it elsewhere in the country, which is a bit of a shame.
02:58Wasn't that a shame?
03:00Yes, a shame.
03:02Indeed, I think it's powerful.
03:04Now, after the end, I think it's just a bit of a shame,
