The prevarication and political wrangling over the HS2 rail project and London’s airports are just the latest examples of successive British governments’ inability to deliver timely and decent infrastructure to an increasingly put-upon and frustrated public.

Beholden to an ever-cautious Treasury, policy towards infrastructure has long lacked scale, coherence, and consistency, and failed to act on the various market failures that hold back private sector participation in the funding of such projects.