Backtracking on HS2
What’s happened?
fter years of reassurances and manifesto pledges that High Speed 2 would be built in full – including the arm from Birmingham to Yorkshire as well as the one to Manchester – the current government has backtracked. Instead of heading to Leeds, there will be a much shorter spur northeast from Birmingham to East Midlands Parkway, a new station serving the region around Leicester, Derby and Nottingham. From there, high-speed trains will slow down onto existing lines. If HS2 has always been a white elephant, quipped the Tory MP Sir Edward Leigh, then it
