SIR – While speculation and controversy rages about the efficacy of HS2, readers may be interested in more practical Tory motivations Construction is the ultimate capitalist enterprise. In very few other manufacturing areas can an employer take on the workforce (as casual or self-employed labour) for a minutely prescribed duration, and then dismiss them immediately their usefulness is served.

Similarly with materials, good planning allows the best financial advantage to be made of ‘just in time’ principles and wastage and delay can be kept to a bare minimum.

While it is well known that no-one ever got rich working in construction, some have become very very rich by organising it. Which is possibly why the Tory party hierarchy reads like a Who’s Who of construction juggernauts with names like MacAlpine Lilley and Parkinson, etc.

Were I given to cynicism, I could suggest that this is one of many possible reasons the Tories are prepared to (quite literally) cut a swathe through their Home Counties heartland and trample on any and all objections to this £50 billion-plus (for starters) construction contract.

Proof, if proof were needed, that their true loyalties lie only with the vastly wealthy (working class Tories, please note).

Christopher Hindle, Osterley Grove, Bradford