The chancellor should save the nation further blushes and fund tunnelling to the central London station

No, the long and painful saga of HS2 did not reach its final destination when Rishi Sunak axed the entire northern phase of the project last October. For starters, there is the mopping-up exercise on the cost of that decision – a write-off of £2.17bn in the latest accounts.

Of that, £1.1bn is money actually spent on the ground in preparing phase two before it was jettisoned. It is money down the drain in the purest sense.