Nigel Farage has furious row with caller over HS2

11 February 2020, 18:45 | Updated: 11 February 2020, 18:48

Nigel Farage and this caller had a furious row over whether the HS2 is money well spent after Boris Johnson announced today he has given the go-ahead to the project.

Martin from Bromley challenged Nigel's opposition to the HS2: "Imagine what the road network would be like if we hadn't built the motorways."

When Nigel said we already have train lines to Birmingham, Martin said people are focussed too much about the time it takes and emphasised we need more tracks.

"The only people using HS2 will be the rich," Nigel said and Martin responded that HS2 Limited will need to work something out that is cost-effective.

"Martin, we can build longer tracks, we can build longer trains, there are things we can do about capacity," Nigel said, "but the argument that we should spend this a vast amount of money to benefit a few people-"

Martin said he didn't think it'd benefit a few people, it'd benefit many, and gave the example of the Channel Tunnel.

Nigel insisted there's no alternative to the Channel Tunnel but we have a "perfectly workable train line from London to Birmingham."

"We just don't have enough tracks, it's as simple as that!" Martin exclaimed.

Nigel countered that the railway line to the west of England is "catastrophic" and it's impossible to get across from Hull to Liverpool during the rush hour;

"Even building a tunnel under Stone Henge would cost £1.7 billion. My argument is you could have 50 projects like that tunnel for the price of one train line -"

Martin dismissed this and pointed out the volume of money isn't spent at once but over a period of years so the impact wouldn't be as large.