HS2 was never a vanity project, nor even really about speed. It was conceived to achieve three national goals: to reduce carbon emissions, to increase rail capacity and most importantly to rebalance economic prosperity, mainly through creating regeneration in the West Midlands and North-west.

Fifteen years on, the need to deliver these goals has only increased. Crucially we still have a huge and growing economic divide between London and rest of the UK, and the gap in economic output has grown.