Hs2

Since the election, few issues have divided opinion among Tory MPs more than HS2. Boris Johnson’s decision to press ahead with the scheme to Crewe will have its detractors. The reason so many smaller, local infrastructure schemes are also being announced today is to try and reassure Tory MPs that this is not an either or choice. The very act of taking a decision should calm some of the blue-on-blue action we have seen over HS2. I suspect that those MPs whose constituencies are most negatively affected by it will continue to campaign against it, as will several Tory MPs who are no longer interested in climbing the greasy pole. But the bulk of the parliamentary party will accept the decision, whatever their misgivings about it.

No. 10's relationship with the media has been frosty at times, with ministers reportedly banned from appearing on shows like the Today programme. Boris Johnson has now taken that antipathy a step further. The PM has been caught on Sky News talking to a school children about one of the biggest long-running news stories of the moment. During the discussion, Mr Johnson was asked by ten-year-old Braydon Brent about HS2. Much has been made in recent weeks of the government's potential plans to scrap the scheme. However, instead of revealing the fate of the troubled project to an established journalist, Boris decided that young Braydon should be the first to know. The schoolboy reportedly asked what HS2 was, to which the Prime Minister replied: 'It's a colossal railway line.

Jeremy Corbyn has stopped asking questions at PMQs. The lecture-circuit now looms for the Labour leader, so he uses the Wednesday sessions to practise the Grand Orations he will soon be making to drowsy socialists in overheated conference-halls around the world. He’s unlikely to match the fees commanded by the world’s top lecture-stars, Tony Blair and Barack Obama. His performance lacks bounce or crackle. He’s incapable channelling either passion or excitement and he simply recites his bullet-points like a sleep-deprived Bingo-caller. And his jokes misfire. Today he opened with a gag about the presenter of Just A Minute who died yesterday, aged 96. ‘Mr Speaker,’ said Corbyn, ‘can we take a minute to pay tribute to Nicholas Parsons.

It's decision time in No. 10. This week ought to be the week in which a decision is made on whether HS2 should proceed – and whether Huawei should be given access to the UK's 5G network. Whichever way the government moves on these issues, a chunk of the Tory party will be left unhappy. On HS2, the initial signs suggest the government is leaning towards giving the project the go ahead – at least in some form. No decision will be made until Boris Johnson meets this week with Sajid Javid and Grant Shapps, the Transport Secretary. However, on Sunday, Stephen Barclay – the Brexit Secretary – suggested on the Andrew Marr show that high speed rail was a key part of the government's promise to level up the country.

More criticism of the infamous HS2 high-speed rail project emerged today, as the National Audit Office published their findings of serious mismanagement and rocketing costs, implicating both HS2 limited and the Department for Transport. From the NAO watchdog: 'The Department, HS2 Ltd and government more widely underestimated the task, leading to optimistic estimates being used to set budgets and delivery dates. In not fully and openly recognising the programme’s risks from the outset, the Department and HS2 Ltd have not adequately managed the risks to value for money. If these risks had been recognised and managed earlier, then the significant activity in a pressured environment over the past year trying to understand and contain cost increases may not have been necessary.

Moaning minnie MPs Sir: I was recently quoted in the Sun newspaper in a story about how MPs were reacting to the Brexit drama in the House of Commons. I said: ‘It feels like the Commons is having a collective breakdown — a cross between Lord of the Flies and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. People are behaving in ways that were unimaginable even just a year ago, whether they be Remainers, Leavers or in-betweens. The Brexit madness has affected us all.’ Following Melissa Kite’s article in last week’s Spectator berating MPs for being such wastrels and using my quote as an example of ‘wimpishness’ personified, I learn we are all moaning minnies and should just get on with the job of delivering Brexit (‘Uncool Britannnia’, 13 April).

No one is in any doubt about the problem facing Britain’s railways. Over the past decade, rail fares have risen twice as fast as salaries. Yet across the national network, overcrowding is at record levels, cancellations are spiralling and passenger dissatisfaction is at a ten-year high. Yet ministers are about to start pouring £4.5 billion a year, every year for a decade, into building a single new railway route: HS2. To put this into perspective, the amount annually maintaining and upgrading the rest of the rail network is £6 billion. It’s a trap that we can, even now, avoid. Much has changed since the scheme was launched in 2010. Official cost estimates have almost doubled — from £33 billion to £56 billion.