• HS2 is an object lesson in demonstrating no government department can manage a major infrastructure project without it running massively over budget and many years late.

In HS2’s case this has also involved wholesale distortion of the truth and the serial mistreatment of those affected by its plans.

It is deeply depressing that the Oakervee Report on HS2, claimed to be a balanced and fair review of the project, should (according to a leaked source) turn out to be no more than a glorified rubber stamp.

Doug Oakervee, a former chair of HS2, has ensured this by excluding vice-chair, Lord Berkeley, a well-informed critic of HS2, from any input into the final report or even sight of it. Oakervee has not only marked his own homework, he has given himself full marks.

In the light of HS2, a £100billion fiasco, it is extraordinary that any member of the electorate should still be attracted to, rather than being repelled by, the grotesque spending promises of all the main parties.

Labour is, of course, far ahead in its traditional strategy of bribing the electorate with its own money, but all parties are caught up in an extraordinary bidding war.

Except for Brexit, HS2 is the clearest example of the political class failing to follow common sense or obey the voters’ wishes.

HS2 is recognised by the great majority of the electorate as a monstrous waste of money. Boris Johnson should cancel HS2 now.

He should then, instead, promise to spend £50billion on finite schemes to improve the infrastructure, and business needs, of the north and other areas away from London.

Voters on all sides would be united at the final despatch of an unloved and unlovable, cripplingly expensive, mega-project whose existence has only been sustained by lies and lobbyists.

MARTIN L SHEPPARD, NW1