If not HS2 then what?

A claim is being made - as we’ve been noting ourselves - that HS2 isn’t worth the candle. So, what instead?

HS2 is a super turkey. Let’s invest in northern rail instead

That is not the correct answer. For it is to make the claim that there is some pot of money which should be spent upon transport. Or that there is some pot of money that government should be spending. Upon something or other.

Neither of which is true. We have a long list of things that the resources of the nation can be spent upon. That list being, quite literally, everything. Money is after all fungible, it’s something that can be devoted to any end.

That a specific transport idea isn’t worth doing - as HS2 isn’t - does not then mean that some other transport project must be done. Or even that anything to be done by government should be done as a substitute. Once we kill one allocation of resources off we need to go back to the beginning again and think through all of the alternative uses of that money, those resources. Then see which one comes top of our new list.

Which could be northern rail. Might be protecting the lesser wagtail (if such a thing exists, creating it if not). Or boosting education, a decent movie about punk rock or a memorial to the Unknown Taxpayer. Or whatever the heck 65 million individuals might decide they’d like to spend their own money upon.

The best manner of deciding between these alternatives is to leave the price fructifying in the pockets of the populace. For it is indeed true that some forms of collective action justify picking those pockets. But each and every such proposal must pass that test of justification. That the wallets have been vacuumed for some other purpose which we now abandon doesn’t mean that some other form of government - or transport - spending now passes that justificatory test.

That government shouldn’t be doing HS2 is entirely true but that doesn’t mean that government must be doing something else. Our default option must always be that if government shouldn’t be doing this one thing then government should be doing nothing with this money. Even, not having the money at all.