Is Philip Hammond a liar or a fool?

At a time when we’re cutting public services because we’ve no money, our idiotic transport secretary, Philip Hammond, wants to splash out £32bn on a rail line that will cut a few minutes off the train journey between London and Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds. Using the usual dodgy consultants’ estimates, buffoon Hammond claims that we’ll get £44bn ‘economic benefits’ from his great plan. But what if the rail link were to go over budget and cost more than the £32bn? The Olympics were budgeted at £2.4bn, but will cost us over £10bn. The NHS computer system should have cost £2.3bn but if ever completed will be over £8bn. Barts hospital was planned at £620m, but came in at around £1bn. I could go on and on and on. But you probably get the picture.

Not a single major project launched by our government has ever come in anywhere near the original budget. The high speed rail link is a disaster we don’t need and which can never pay for itself. So is Philip Hammond a liar or a fool? Both, I suspect.