Hs2

In an interview with The Spectator this week, the Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin admits that HS2 will not have been approved by parliament before the next election. This invites the question, will HS2 become an election issue? Both Ed Balls and Andy Burnham have made forays against HS2 in recent months. But both have been slapped down by Ed Miliband's office. His allies believe that Labour can't run on a platform of rebuilding Britain while simultaneously promising to put a stop to the biggest infrastructure project in decades. But one wonders if this Labour position will hold. The Tory election campaign will claim repeatedly that Labour's sums don't add up, they'll constantly accuse Labour of planning to raise taxes or borrowing.

In this week's Spectator magazine, James Forsyth interviews the Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin. McLoughlin admits that the government is unlikely legislation to get the HS2 Bill through Parliament before the next election — which could leave a major threat over the project in 2015. 'There are a bevy of Tory MPs opposed to having HS2 run through their patch or a new runway built in their backyard. But McLoughlin has agreed to tolerate dissent. ‘You have to accept that certain people, certain constituencies are heavily impacted by a piece of national infrastructure,’ he says. ‘Those MPs have got a duty to stand up for their constituents and make the case for their constituents. You’ll never hear me criticise that.

More details of the split Eds have emerged. As Guido reports, Balls has never been to the pub with Miliband, nor knows ‘if he likes the pub or not’. And, in her Times column today (£), Rachel Sylvester reveals that High Speed 2 is another diving line between Labour’s big beasts: ‘There is clear disagreement over HS2 — although Mr Balls’ conference speech, in which he raised concerns about the cost, was approved by Mr Miliband, there was irritation in the leader’s office about the briefing afterwards that emphasised the Shadow Chancellor’s skepticism about the high-speed line.’ After Balls’s conference speech, Brighton was aflutter with rumours that Labour was going to withdraw support for HS2.

The government is trying to pick up steam on High Speed 2 (again) by wheeling out Michael Heseltine to make the case for the project. Tonight at the Royal Town Planning Institute, the former Transport Secretary will argue that the new line is about spreading prosperity and doing 'the right thing' for our country: 'HS2 is about our country’s competitiveness for a half century or more. It is about so many more people sharing growth that has, for too long, been concentrated on London and the South East. It’s all about drawing together our economy as a whole as well as improving our access to the enlarged, and enlarging, home market of Europe. It is not about 30 minutes off London to Birmingham.

The never-ending slew of messages from Labour figures about the party's 'clear' position on high-speed rail was part of an attempt by the party to show that it is a credible opposition that scrutinises policies rather than blindly supports them. But this got rather confusing last week as each 'clear position' was a little different to the last. So today Ed Balls tried to set out Labour's clear position more clearly when he spoke to the CBI conference. And it turns out that this position is the same as it was at the party's conference. Here is the section on the new line in the Shadow Chancellor's speech: 'Labour supports HS2 and the idea of a new North-South rail link because of capacity constraints on the existing rail network. But our support for it is not at any cost.

When George Osborne first announced his plans for high speed rail, I was all for it. I’ve spent too much of my life on broken-down trains between Inverkeithing and London – and, like many Scots, resented the way that most transport money seemed to be spent in the imperial capital. As I say in my Telegraph column today, the key to staying happy about HS2 is not to think about it much further: don’t contemplate the costs, don’t ask if transport can be helped in other ways. This is what Westminster is doing: all its parties have signed up to the project. They won’t have a proper debate about it. We at The Spectator did out bit last night, with yet another highly successful debate on HS2.