As such, a railway billed as the solution to “levelling up” could make regional imbalances even worse – particularly now the Birmingham to Leeds branch has been scrapped. 

Already Europe’s largest infrastructure project, HS2 will be the most expensive railway ever built. The original 2010 price tag has spiralled from around £30bn to over £100bn. Countless transport experts have slammed the project as grotesquely over-priced, while offering terrible value for taxpayers’ money. 

The productivity benefits of a marginally faster service between cities in the North and South are indeed vanishingly small. The real gains are to be had by building more frequent, faster routes into and between our Northern towns and cities, linking them together into a growth centre to rival London. This can be achieved relatively quickly and cheaply, compared to the time and expense of building the HS2 white elephant. 

Already under construction for over a year, work on HS2 is overwhelmingly centred on the London to Birmingham leg. Many so-called “red wall” MPs, including many Conservatives, have understandably argued that building work should have started in the North instead. Boris Johnson’s majority is built on retaining those red wall seats won from Labour in 2019. If levelling up is seen as little more than a slogan, a series of broken promises, those seats could be lost once more.

Given that, the oddest part of last week’s rail announcement was that Northern Powerhouse Rail (NPR), the proposed high-speed link connecting Liverpool to Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield, Hull and ultimately Newcastle, has also hit the buffers. Among many voters and political leaders in the North, NPR is the centrepiece of the levelling-up agenda.

Yet we now know long-awaited improvements to west-east rail services across the North will consist of upgrades to existing lines, not a new high-speed service. This despite countless independent studies showing that the productivity gains of NPR far outstrip those of HS2. Yet HS2 is being built, while Northern Powerhouse Rail isn’t. 

Unveiling the Government’s plans, Grant Shapps, the Transport Secretary, said they involved £96bn of investment in the Midlands and the North. Yet the bulk of this package has already been announced, including as it does the cost of the London-Birmingham link, which far from benefiting the North, does more to bring the wealthier parts of residential Birmingham into the London commuter belt.