‘Sir Keir has the opportunity to show that Labour is the party of economic sanity and financial prudence by coming out against HS2’

• LORD Adonis of Camden Town should certainly apologise to everyone in Camden for the devastation his pet project of HS2 has caused, (HS2 chaos all around – and not a peep out of Lord Adonis, March 30).

Adonis, however, no longer has the power to influence the future of the white elephant to which he gave birth.

In contrast Sir Keir Starmer, as leader of the opposition as well as Holborn and St Pancras MP, is in a uniquely strong position to put an end to HS2 by withdrawing Labour’s support for this grotesque project. He owes his constituents an explanation as to why he has not done so to date.

The case against HS2 is overwhelmingly strong. Its founding premise of speed is already outdated, it is irrelevant in the age of laptop computers and Zoom.

Its business case is built on sand, with the costs of building the line heavily outweighing the benefits. It is not the answer to either passenger demand or freight capacity.

All other rail improvements, including badly needed ones in the north, have been abandoned for the foreseeable future because of it.

It is already tens of billions of pounds over budget, despite the strong likelihood that it will never be completed. HS2’s management is grossly overpaid and spectacularly useless, as emphatically demonstrated by its failure to solve the problem of the construction of its station at Euston.

HS2 has brought misery and blight to all those near the line and has treated its victims with contempt. It is certainly not green. It will not link the north with the south and has no popular support in either. It is difficult to think of any clearer case of government incompetence.

Despite this woeful catalogue of failure, both Labour and the Conservatives still support HS2. As a project backed in its passage through parliament by all parties except the Greens and UKIP, HS2 has been exempt from meaningful political debate or scrutiny.

It is difficult to avoid the suspicion that there is a secret pact between the two main parties to keep this zombie project going.

Sir Keir, however, now has the opportunity to show that Labour is the party of economic sanity and financial prudence by coming out against HS2.

He should make it plain that HS2 is an emperor with no clothes and that because £10billion has been wasted there is no reason to waste another £100billion.

The money saved would help fund many of a future Labour government’s spending pledges. Sir Keir and Labour have nothing to lose by killing HS2.

I invite him to do so for the sake of the people of Holborn and St Pancras, for taxpayers, and for the country as whole.

Above all, I ask him to kill HS2 for the sake of common sense. He will find, if he does so, that he will be thanked by the overwhelming majority of voters.

MARTIN SHEPPARD, NW1