‘We are a political project’: how HS2’s costs have spiralled out of control

Placating Conservatives in marginal seats, inflation in construction and a maze of bureaucracy have seen the cost balloon from 32bn to 71bn

Should the enormous engineering feat of HS2 become Rishi Sunak's white elephant, these could be its expensive tusks.

At what was once a staging post but now looks like the end of the line, Old Oak Common, two brand new tunnel boring machines are to be buried underground, unused, ready for action - a mere 40m of kit that may never now drill the route's last six miles east into central London.