The Birmingham Illusion: How a City Prospered Despite the HS2 Con Trick
If HS2 was a con, Birmingham turned it into confidence.
HS2 is back in the headlines. Once again it is over budget, behind schedule and shrinking by the month. The latest twist is a four-year delay to the crucial 18-mile connection between Birmingham and the West Coast Main Line, pushing any meaningful link north well into the 2030s. It is another reminder that Britain’s most expensive infrastructure project has become a masterclass in retreat.
Meanwhile, the London terminus will not be Euston but Old Oak Common, a location that sounds like a Jane Austen hamlet but feels more like a leftover from an industrial clearance. No Marks & Spencer, no Caffè Nero, no John Lewis. It is not the front door to London, but a concrete cul-de-sac on the edge of Wormwood Scrubs.
And through it all, Birmingham looks on.
Born in a Con
HS2 was built on illusion from the start. It was sold as a bold new link between London and Birmingham, yet the original plan did not even reach Birmingham. The main high-speed line was to stop at Birmingham Interchange, near the NEC and the airport, while a spur would branch off to Curzon Street. A side project dressed up as the headline act.
So even in its cradle, the project was a confidence trick. It looked like a railway for the Midlands but was really a shortcut for London. When the northern leg was scrapped, that spur suddenly became the main event. Curzon Street, once a secondary stop, was recast as the end of the line.
What was billed as the gateway to the North became the terminus of a truncated dream.
The Leap of Faith
Still, Birmingham refused to sulk. The city chose to believe and built around the promise. The Curzon Investment Plan, the rebirth of Eastside, and the transformation of Digbeth all took shape in the expectation of high-speed prosperity. Developers piled in. Universities expanded. Artists and entrepreneurs reclaimed the old warehouses.
Even without Channel 4, which chose Leeds, Birmingham carried on. The creative quarter flourished anyway. Today Peaky Blinders creator Stephen Knight’s Digbeth Loc. Studios anchor a thriving media community.
Birmingham did not wait for the train to arrive. It built the station, then built the future around it.
The Believer
Among HS2’s most steadfast champions was Andy Street, the Midlands’ favourite knight and former John Lewis boss. As Mayor of the West Midlands he fought for the project, even against his own party’s prime minister. He believed HS2 was more than a railway, that it symbolised faith in Birmingham’s potential.
That faith was not misplaced, but it was exploited. Like the Channel 4 bid he once championed, Street could not bring the prize home, yet his fight drew real investment. The cranes, the offices and the optimism remain. What Westminster sold as transformation, Birmingham made real through sheer will.
Whether Sir Andy can still smile at what HS2 has become is another question. The city he fought for has been short-changed by the capital he once served.
The Managers of Mirage
In London, the executives came and went. Alison Munro drew the plans. Simon Kirby drew a salary that would make a banker blush. Mark Thurston endured six weary years before departing with a golden handshake. Now Mark Wild, the man who steadied Crossrail, has been tasked with “resetting” the project once more.
Wild is competent and grounded, but he cannot change the laws of politics. His job is not to expand the dream, but to manage its slow retreat. Each reset costs more, delivers less, and ends with another executive farewell. Through it all, Birmingham remains the constant, the believer city that kept faith while London lost its nerve.
The Political Illusion
In Westminster, Birmingham’s optimism became a prop. Ministers pointed to Digbeth’s cranes as evidence that “HS2 is already delivering.” The Treasury loved the photos, a skyline they could claim as their own before a single train ever ran.
But Birmingham’s faith was genuine, and in that sincerity lay its success. While London turned the project into spin, the Midlands turned it into substance.
The London Illusion
And then there is the London end, the perfect mirror of the Birmingham con.
HS2 was meant to run from Birmingham’s Curzon Street to London Euston, city to city. When the budget imploded, ministers quietly dropped the last few miles. The new “terminus” will be Old Oak Common, six miles from Westminster and seven from the City.
The name might suggest charm, but the place itself tells a different story. It is a soulless corner of west London that almost bears the scars of the Luftwaffe, a drab expanse of sidings and workshops where the ground feels permanently grey. It is the kind of landscape you might glimpse in a black-and-white post-war film, the camera panning across half-cleared rubble and broken chimneys. You half expect to see a weary clerk cycling past piles of cinders, collar turned up against the drizzle.
Just scaffolding yards and the long shadow of Wormwood Scrubs.
Even the promised journey time is now a work of fiction. Passengers arriving at Old Oak Common will need to transfer onto the Elizabeth Line to reach the real London. Ten minutes to Bond Street on a good day, twenty to Liverpool Street, forty-five or more on a Sunday night if you miss a connection. Add the long walk between platforms and your “high-speed” trip from Birmingham to central London could take well over ninety minutes door to door.
This is what passes for London’s “front door”, a terminus built on the city’s blind side, where the only heritage is desolation and the timetable an illusion.
So the question practically asks itself: after a hundred billion pounds and twenty years of disruption, what has HS2 actually done for rail travel?
Even at 225 miles an hour, it seems we are still standing still.
The Real Success Story
Yet here lies the twist. Birmingham, the city built around a con, is the one part of HS2 that actually works.
The east side, once derelict, hums with new energy. Curzon Street rises from the ground. Digbeth buzzes with builders, students and start-ups. What began as a side story has become the city’s front page.
The trains have not come, but the transformation has.
The Lesson
HS2 will stand as the costliest confidence trick in British history, a railway that never truly reaches either city it claims to serve.
But Birmingham’s story is different. The city that was supposed to be saved by HS2 went ahead and saved itself. Andy Street believed it could, and in that belief he was right.
If HS2 was a con, Birmingham turned it into confidence. And in the long run, that might be the only part of this whole enterprise that truly delivers.