Who is really to blame for miserable failures of HS27

Heidi Alexander, the transport secretary, was determined to blame the Conservatives when she announced that what is left of the High Speed Two rail project will be delayed again.

- JOHN RENTOUL

"I have to be honest," she told the Commons on Wednesday, "this is an appalling mess." She demanded that Gareth Bacon, her mild-mannered Conservative shadow, apologise, saying that his party had promised people "the Moon on a stick" but had left a "shambles" for Labour to sort out.

She said: "Years of mismanagement and neglect have turned HS2 into a shadow of that vision put forward 15 years ago, but this government were elected on a mandate to restore trust to our politics, and that is why we will not shirk away from this challenge and why today we turn the page on infrastructure failures."

Was this foreseeable from the start?

I remember being in Andrew Adonis's office when he was secretary of state for transport in 2009. He was his usual hyperenthusiastic self as he showed me a map on the wall of his plan for a second high-speed railway in Britain. He was so excited about it, and only briefly crestfallen when I said that I thought it was a bad idea.