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HS2 is currently estimated to cost £56bn. I don’t know what the tracks are made of, but I’m assuming gold-plated aluminium.

For that money, several wearisome businesspeople from Leeds will be able to reach an appointment in London 20 minutes quicker. Although not if some leaves have fallen on the line, obviously.

While Concorde saw the taxpayer – coalminer, steelworker, shop assistant – pick up the bill for an aircraft then affordable only to a privileged elite, HS2 will see the entire country chip in for a train track solely for those in the very highest income bracket. Basically, a normal person bankrupting themselves for a ticket faces the very real risk of sharing a carriage with Piers Morgan and Simon Cowell.

Supporters say HS2 will increase connectivity across the country. But make no mistake, HS2 is not there to help people travel out of London, it is there to speed people in. The power base of the South-East will be radically increased.

Don’t get me wrong, I like London. I can step off the train, pick my way through the homeless, and marvel at any number of sights and buildings. But its position as the absolute hub of so many modern industries is undeniably frightening.

For many careers, it is London or bust, a self-perpetuating situation that, inevitably, is flinging more and more people south.

I’m not saying things are getting out of hand, but the next big sporting event to be held in this country will be The Hunger Games. The capital gets ever richer while the rest of us hope we’re not Sector 12.

It’s for this very reason that I am petitioning for Parliament to be moved to Glossop, HSBC to Workington, and Google to Cowdenbeath.

If we don’t start to spread the wealth, where are we going to end up? My guess is that in 50 years, the garment of choice in areas north of Watford will be the smock.

Forget cars, it’ll be WeBuyAnyYak.com.

Faggots, brawn, and tripe will all be back on the menu. Pipe lagging will be considered a tasty treat. In the north, Oliver! will be considered a documentary.

Instead of building HS2, the real necessity is for investment in the Midlands and the North. Word is the last time a UFO flew over Wigan, the occupants deemed Earth uninhabitable and went home again.

My belief is that institutionally among the ruling classes there has never been any belief in the North and Midlands as anything other than a place where people do the dirty work and die.

When, between colliding with passing motorists outside Sandringham, Prince Philip described Stoke-on-Trent as ‘ghastly’, you can bet your life he was only saying out loud what the majority of the southern elite believe. Ever seen Jacob Rees Mogg in Fenton? It ain’t going to happen.

Senior Tories only come to North Staffordshire for the cynical pursuit of positioning themselves alongside the crucible of manufacturing, to fashion an appearance that they are of ‘the people’.

Theresa May might have popped up at Portmeirion the other week, but her true distance from anything resembling empathy with ‘the people’ was better revealed by the sheer lack of common human sympathy and understanding she exhibited when visiting Grenfell Tower. Number 10 might as well have sent the Cabinet table.

Attitudinal and institutional change is not going to happen by spending £56bn on a gentlemen’s train set. For that reason, I hope rumours of HS2’s scrapping are not wide of the mark.

When the sun comes up in the morning, it shouldn’t just shine on the South-East.