‘Quite High Speed 2’ rail from Birmingham to Manchester: Just the ticket after the Sunak shambles

How many commuters in Kent are irritated that trains from Dover, Folkestone and Canterbury to London run at “only” 140mph rather than the 186mph achieved by Eurostar on the same stretch of track.

I imagine the answer is zero. Were more expensive, energy-devouring trains put on the Southeastern links to and from London St Pancras, they might save 10 minutes a day. But to a woman and man, regular rail users enjoy much more reliable services than before the High Speed 1 link was opened.

While you can still go the slow (and very pretty) way by train from the Kent coast to London Charing Cross, the vast majority of journeys from east Kent to the capital have moved to the fleet of 140mph Javelin expresses running on dedicated tracks. Local commuter services are more predictable, too, no longer having to make way for longer-distance trains trying to thread their way to London on Victorian infrastructure.

Other, hidden benefits including freeing up capacity on the low-speed network, allowing freight to shift from the M2 and M20 to rail.

Eurostar needs to operate at 186mph on HS1, and in France, because on a 300-mile plus journey such as London to Paris the extra speed makes a tangible difference. Were it only 140mph all the way, the 2h15m inter-capital journey could take half-an-hour longer, losing its edge against the airlines. But in a compact, crowded nation such as Britain, what’s a few minutes between friends?

You will recall the unforgivable cancellation of the Birmingham-Manchester stretch of HS2 by railway-loathing Rishi Sunak. In a vain attempt to shore up the motoring vote, he reversed 15 years of cross-party agreement and pretended that the money saved would be spent on piecemeal transport improvements collectively called “Network North”, which surprisingly included projects in Kent and Devon.

Now the mayors of Greater Manchester and the West Midlands are seeking to rescue this vital piece of infrastructure from the last prime minister’s bonfire of transport modernity. Andy Burnhan and Richard Parker are backing a cheaper, slower version of the originally planned line. It would take the pressure from the West Coast main line north of Birmingham: offering a path for Quite High Speed trains through Staffordshire and Cheshire, connecting with Northern Powerhouse Rail.

QHS2, as I shall call it,…