Absolutely no facts to back this up, so no links sorry. (Not unusual on this forum I think), just a hunch on my part. Government borrowing already astronomic (>£300 billion) so the perfect "get out of jail card" for Boris.

HS2 can be scrapped saving over £100 billion (the odd £10 billion already spent on consultants etc will be written off as petty cash in the grand scheme of things). Boris will blame Shapp, Shapp will blame Sunak, Sunak will blame the COVID virus....bingo!