It is inappropriate that the cost benefit analysis of the largest civil construction project in Europe, worth between £56 billion and £100 billion, is essentially in the hands of a newly appointed, inexperienced transport minister with a less than savoury business/ political background.  That background includes allegations of bullying that was then associated with the suicide of a young Conservative activist. There were also allegations of the use of false names to conduct anonymous ‘get rich quick’ online business schemes, etc.

The position of any Secretary of State should only be held by an experienced politician of proven integrity and loyalty to parliament and to the United Kingdom.  Unfortunately, there are two members of the Boris Johnson cabinet who fail to meet these fundamentally basic requirements; whose loyalty and/or integrity is suspect and who were respectively required to resign their former cabinet positions in previous governments owing to either breaking the Ministerial Code, maladministration or unsuitability.

Any review of the massive Northern Powerhouse, HS2 Rail Link project must be carried out by qualified professionals, not unqualified politicians with their own personal ‘get-rich-quick’ agendas. The stakes for the country are too high to allow dubious politicians with questionable backgrounds, or who have previously conspired with foreign governments, to determine the viability of multi-billion pound, UK national infrastructure projects that will affect the lives of millions of us, and our children, in decades to come.

The Boris Johnson Conservative cabinet is currently fatally flawed by incompetent incumbents, and that is dangerously problematical.

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Hans Stehling (pen name) is an analyst based in the UK. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.