An article by Helen Thomas in the FT this morning opens with :this paragraph:
After this year, it is perhaps no great surprise that the UK can't make the trains run on time. This isn't a Mussolini reference. The opening sentence of the Williams-Shapps plan for rail, published in May 2021, set that modest aspiration: “We want our trains to run on time.”
The article makes all sorts of good points thereafter, except for the most obvious one, which is that the privatisation of railways in the UK has been a total disaster, leaving the whole system divided and utterly without direction, with the government largely unable to do much about that because contractual obligations prevent action in far too many cases. The cost of that inaction is high. No wonder we have such poor economic performance when so many of our basic services are in disarray, as the rail industry is.
There is no surprise about this. By the end of World War 1 it was appreciated that the operation of the UK's railways system by many separate privately owned railways companies was not viable when the system was so strategically important. The immediate post-war plan was for nationalisation. Even Winston Churchill supported it.
The plan failed. Four companies ‘grouped' the railways on broadly regional lines. This did not work. Railways in the east of England and Scotland, in particular, were massively under-capitalised, most especially when recession hit. After WW2 the inevitable was done, and the railways were nationalised.
I am not suggesting that thereafter all was sweetness and light. There was mistaken investment in the 1950s. In the 1960s the reaction was the Beeching Report, where blatantly false accounting was used to deliver the closure of far too many railway lines that could have been very usefully retained. And it was undoubtedly true that British Rail was a trailer terrible catering company.
None of this distracts from the fact that there was at least a rail strategy at the time. There is no such thing now. There is, at best, micro-management when other countries are reacting post Covid, and in the light of the need for sustainable transport, with truly innovative and low cost rail offers that ensure that rail is a real alternative to the car in many such places. With the staggering fares charged on some routes in the UK that is just not true here.
Railways are a natural monopoly. Safety requires a single entity in control of the tracks. Conflicting companies, indifferent to what is happening elsewhere on the network, have reduced the idea of service to the point where it is almost non-existent. And although we are promised Great British Railways, so far there is not even a hint of legislation to deliver it, so a cobbled mess of franchised operations persists. Given the inability of Sunak's Tory party to govern no doubt this will continue for a long time to come.
What we need is a government that understands that natural monopolies need to be in state control, with singular direction to ensure co-ordination of service, even if regional management is devolved to reflect local need as evidenced by local authority engagement. That observation covers rail, buses, health, education, water, energy, broadband, post and much else.
The time has come to reverse the privatisation era. Its main purpose was to create legal claims on profit streams that rightfully belonged to the state, with the simultaneous intention of making it as difficult as possible to reverse this process. It was never intended to deliver benefit to the country.
In 1948 British Railways was nationalised as part of the British Transport Commission. N0 money changed hands. Those who held shares in the vast array of companies that came under the control of the Commission were issued with British Transport Commission 3% bonds in exchange. They were supposedly repayable in 1978. They were, of course, simply rolled over into new bonds that formed part of the national debt.
We could do this again now: I would suggest 100 year bonds be used. As in 1948, sensible arbitration allowing for the value of state subsidies could be used to determine the value of bonds to be issued. We'd simply pick up a cost for the interest as a result and yet Labour keep telling us taxpayer's money (a meaningless and incorrect term because there is no such thing) should not be used for this purpose when other demands on cash are high. But as I suggest, no cash need be involved. So what is the problem Labour? Why not just say you'll do it? It's a guaranteed vote winner. And the country needs it, very badly.
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Hopefully they wouldn’t stop at the railways.
To paraphrase Proudhon:
Privatisation is theft!
Because the Labour party is now solely a vehicle for the ego of that spineless and vapid goon Sir Keir Starmer.
That is most unfair; it is a vehicle for many other vapid goons as well.
Just in case you have not heard it, check Alexei Sayle’s poem about Sir Keir on BBC sounds, last episode of current ‘ sandwich bar’ series. Radio highlight of the year for me.
The Labour leadership are terrified that any policy that Jeremy Corbyn woud be in favour of is toxic and so wont touch it with a barge pole.
They could at the very least do it piecemeal, as the franchises end take them back into public ownership, as the government has done *twice* with the east coast line. I don’t know how it’s going at the moment but the first time it was successful, returning profits to the treasury and with good passenger satisfaction ratings.
I’ve always found this elderly (2013) study very interesting
http://hummedia.manchester.ac.uk/institutes/cresc/sites/default/files/GTR%20Report%20final%205%20June%202013.pdf
Isn’t it the case that the Train Operators lease their rolling stock from two or three Rolling Stock Leasing Companies (ROSCO). As the train operators have very few assets, their value is in their franchise licence, if the franchise is not to be renewed the cost of nationalisation should be low.
Could the new nationalised railway set up its own ROSCO and use that to replace rolling stock as the existing leases expire? It may take a few years, but that way the existing ROSCOs would gradually fade away as their leases expire. There be the upfront costs of buying rolling stock, but it might lead to a resurgence in train building in the UK. It might even lead to the UK building things again, rather than importing them!
Excellent idea
I am no expert on railways but it seems to me that the profits from running the trains are siphoned off to the rolling stock companies. Profits at the operating level are regulated and quite “political” but by “over-paying” for rolling stock the money is made elsewhere out of the reach of the regulator or the public.
What are the cross-holdings between train operators and rolling stock leasing companies?
I helped make a File on Four on the excess profits of the railway rolling stock companies so long ago that it inspired a Two Johns sketch on Rory Bremner’s show. Nothing has changed
In the 1980s, InterCity was considered, by many other rail operators in mainland Europe to be a model for the operation of intercity services. The Red Star parcel service was fast and cheap. In terms of modernisation: the approach used with respect to the Chiltern line worked (total refurbishment and electrification).
I used intercity services regularly in the 1980s – they were well prices and mostly on time.
Re-nationalise and re-set the whole thing to the late 1980s in terms of organisation & undertake a line by line re-modernisation a la Chiltern. None of this is hard, but does of course require political commitment which is alient to Liebore..
Oh & perhaps a written constitution which enshires the ownership by the state of specific things and services and which would stop tory-imbeciles undertaking pointless experiments with important national services.
Perhaps they could franchise out just the catering!
I hope so
The catering under the current arrangements is appalling, crisps burgers and instant coffee! Always take my own.
It seems pretty clear to me that it’s not the job of the Labour party to win an election but to make sure there can be no viable opposition to the “ideologies” of the ruling zeitgeist, if that’s the right term.
In Scotland earlier this year, the Scottish government began the process to take over Scotrail into public ownership. That seems to be an idea that people are generally quite fond of, even if it hasn’t resulted in any immediate differences to service. If labour (or any party) really don’t want the scottish independence movement to grow anymore than it already has, it seems to me that following this model everywhere would be a good way to win back some support, and more robust public transport links across the border certainly couldn’t hurt that.
Of course, they’d have to actually take on some responsibility for this kind of policy, and I’m not sure our current political system is built to encourage that, especially at the curent turbulent time of strikes and pay uncertainty.
The kind of person who typically posts on here reflects the only risk of a non Labour Government at the next GE. Fortunately Starmer is able to sideline momentum and the far left. You really should trot off collectively and form a Party which fits with your ideals. No one will of course because it’s more fun waving banners and shouting from
the sidelines. Oh and of course it won’t get any electoral support.
So, you are happy to have a Labour Party that represents the interest of capital and Brexiteers bit which will jt represent working people.
Why is that?
More so than yet another Tory government, at least.
A majority in the country are in favour of nationalising the railways and utilities. Starmer became LOTO with promises of such. You seem to be suggesting that Labour’s pitch to the country should be ‘vote Labour because we are not the conservative party (although we may seem to have similar policies)’. On Brexit too, in 2019 Starmer was cheered for saying there would be another vote before leaving the EU, another statement that I am sure helped get him elected as LOTO. Again a majority now think Brexit was a mistake. I don’t think re-joining would be possible at this time, maybe it’s even undesirable, but we should have a good trade relationship with the EU that like all trade agreements means signing up to common rules. Even discussion of that seems out of bounds for Labour at present.
The country needs leadership, by which I mean someone who leads the way, explains honestly the pros & cons of decisions to be made. We need a morally fair, clear plan to get the majority out of the current mess and the determination to implement it be getting elected via an enthused party base speaking to people everywhere. Of course if the vested interests can denigrate such a person we will remain in a mess for now but if we keel over before we start no war will ever be won.
Ha!
Topical.
My journey from Derbyshire to Holyhead was very eventful. The connection from Chester to Holyhead was 30 minutes late stuck outside the station whilst a communication cord was sorted out.
In the old days, a relief train would have been taken out the sidings and got us on our way so that only the passengers on the already delayed train would have been upset – not all of us on the platforms too who had to join the delayed train! The relief train could simply be attached to the original at the other end and return later.
Then we had a 40-minute wait in the middle of nowhere because of trespassers on the line. The intermediate stations were all unmanned, so we had to wait for some help from farther afield.
On the return journey, 15 minutes late leaving because the driver of our train was coming up on another train with other drivers driving trains on other regions who caught our late one! So now the drivers of other trains would be late! In the old days, drivers had digs to sleep in overnight in so that they were where they needed to be for the timetable. This was an early morning train BTW!!
There is no room for error anymore on our railways. The older system has redundancy build in it to absorb things going wrong.
Travelling on our railways today, every journey has those running it with their fingers crossed behind their backs whilst the rentiers rake in their profits.
It’s no way to run ANYTHING, let alone a bloody railway.
You are right
Yet another example where so-called efficiency removes redundancy and as a result the system fails
Don’t disparage the British Rail food, from the 70’s it was very good. I still remember the ham sandwich which I had on the Cornish Riviera and haven’t been able to beat it myself. The bacon rolls were also good I always had one at the station when shopping in Hull. I believe British Rail invented the cellophane wrapped sandwich.
That’s nit my memory from the 70s, I admit
I remember the tea served at Grantham station buffet. It was cracking.
A lovely station, Paragon Station in Hull. Still there as well.
At least in the 70s we could afford train tickets.
https://weownit.org.uk/our-public-services/railways
Weownit has a new action for West Coast Mainline which is in the news at the moment.
https://weownit.org.uk/civicrm/mailing/url?u=15552&qid=20841248
An email direct to Mark Harper. His inbox must be full every day.
The husband of an aunt was the chief steward on the Brighton Belle that served an excellent breakfast to the businessmen and actors (Laurence Olivier amongst others) who lived in Brighton.
Don’t forget that Beeching was in the pocket of the car industry as was the Tory party.
‘all sorts of good points thereafter, except for the most obvious one,’
Yes Richard – in a discussion on R4 WATO – they were asking whether the country being so ‘broken’ – where nothing works, is it time for another Beveridge Report reset – build up some kind of political consensus.
They featured Rachel Wolf of ‘Public First’ which I had never heard of – she wrote the Conservative 2019 manifesto apparently, and Helen Barnard of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.
Wolf said the welfare state can’t work as it did in the 40’s and 50’s – things are so different – implying we cant afford it . She wants people to pay for things- ‘to contribute’. The only specific reason we can’t afford the welfare state she cited was ‘too low growth’ – as if that was some kind of god -imposed state . Thus missing the ‘most obvious one’ – that this is the result of 10 years of government austerity.
But at least there now seems to be more public debate about some of the fundamentals – even Brexit is now getting a mention – despite the political imperative to not mention it.
Self imposed constraints
Remember the JRF is very liberal – and not necessarily progressively so
Minouche Shafiq has recently published a book arguing for the need to establish a new social contract. Eg https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2021/04/what-we-owe-each-other-book-minouche-shafik.htm or https://ifs.org.uk/articles/what-we-owe-each-other-new-social-contract
There is a grown-up and thoughtful conversation to be had about how we collectively share the risk and rewards, costs and benefits, of childcare, and education, and health and social care, and all the other things that provide opportunities and protection, and make life worth living, and how we organise our state and government and society to deliver that. And then government should be judged by a multifactorial scorecard of wellbeing, not the single myopic focus on GDP growth.
In essence, she has to be right
LNER and Southeastern are state owned currently and have been doing better than when privately owned. Compare LNER to Avanti West Coast and there’s really no contest. I recall reading On the Wrong Line by Christian Wolmar and he pointed out that in the case of Southeastern, Connex was booted off the franchise in 2003 because of poor performance and alleged financial irregularities. Under the SRA, Southeastern improved its punctuality and other attributes but New Labour weren’t happy because they wanted to keep a privatised (at least partly) railway to keep the City happy.
Something overlooked is that railways work best when track and train ownership and management are integrated rather than separated as they are now
The last is very true
An article by Johnbosco of weownit. The idea of GBR seems to have been forgotten about now, despite four cities being in the running to have their headquarters.
https://www.newstatesman.com/spotlight/regional-development/2022/11/great-british-railways-uk-transport-woes
The answer to your headline question is obviously the same as to yesterday’s blog. RIght now Labour backs off saying anything that might “scare the horses” and that includes suggesting any policy no matter how sensible.
The disaster of privatisation is that it has fragmented industries in a way that they have perverse individual incentives that don’t work together as a whole. The most obvious at the moment is energy, with part of the the industry making huge profits, but the part that faces the consumer losing out with many companies going bust and the bill being passed to consumers. That clearly isn’t working in the public interest.
For rail, at least the operating companies can eventually revert to public management by simply waiting for franchises to end. And your idea of swapping shares for bonds with the remainder is genius (to be honest with sure-fire investments like the train-leasing companies, profits in excess of the return from government bonds should be taxed at 100%). There would at least then be a way to plan a future for the whole system. To reduce carbon emissions we need well functioning public transport.
My pet hate at the moment is politicians talking about rail “modernisation” in relation to the pay dispute with unions. Yes – but where is the modernisation? Other countries electrified their whole systems 50 years ago, if the British government actually made significant steps to modernise in that way I would be more sympathetic.
Your last para is spot on
The rest we agree on
The Beeching Report was mainly enacted under Wilson’s Labour government.
The story is that Barbara Castle, as Transport Secretary, held a meeting to review it’s progress. It was not delivering the goods, so a map of the railway system was subjected to further croppings.
Today, these cuts are seen as idiotic- such as the line to Manchester through the Peak District.
But…
Beeching gave a Labour government a policy, aka “something to do”.
We are now back in a similar situation.
The Tories giving Labour a oilucy
Usually it is the other way round
I understood that the powers behind this government have been wedded to privatisation, and therefore opposed to nationalisation, even when it makes economic and social sense, because they have been committed to transferring State power and government-created money – abundant, if not limitless – into private institutions and corporations as a result of Bretton Woods in 1944. Perhaps I’m mistaken?
I confess I do not see the link with Bretton Woods
The left wing should give up on Starmer’s Labour, see, https://moneyversusdemocracy.wordpress.com/2022/11/23/the-battle-of-holborn-and-st-pancras/
Big business has been allowed (principally by right of centre politicians) to ruin three things in the UK close to my heart – railways, brewing, and football.
Those who have pointed out the position of the ROSCOs are spot on. They are owned by banks, and it should come as no surprise to find the financial sector’s need to profit as a significant factor in the cost base of the railways of today. The other thing is that the train building companies are private companies too, so unsurprisingly require to make a profit too. Many railway vehicles are imported these days (to the country that gave the world railways…) and those that are still manufactured in the UK are made by UK subsidiaries of foreign multinationals.
The Balkanised nature of our railways contributes to the chaos. Network Rail should however be given some credit for its contribution to the green agenda. It must surely be the largest tree planter in the UK. Trouble is though, many of those trees are growing in places where they are damaging the operational infrastructure of the railway, such is NR’s lack of stewardship of the network (in case there’s any doubt, this is pure sarcasm on my part).
Modern trains are characterised by uncomfortable rock-hard seats, which are badly aligned with the windows (the Pendolinos on the West Coast Main Line have either a third or a quarter of their standard class seats – I forget which – classified as “restricted view” meaning that your seat is against the carriage wall, not a window). I think it fair to say that when the railway works well, it is probably better than it was thirty years ago, broadly. The trouble is, that when things go wrong, and they still do even these days, it is exponentially worse. An example – last month an LNER Azuma stopped in Haymarket Tunnel in Edinburgh, and apparently the overhead wires were damaged. This was around 1730 one evening. Despite it having a diesel capability, no attempt was made to drive it out of the tunnel (most likely backwards into Haymarket station), and it was necessary to evacuate all the passengers through the rear cab onto Haymarket platform, a process that reportedly took half an hour. The train was eventually removed from the tunnel at 1330 the following day, twenty hours after stopping. This reduced the already busy four tracks west from Waverley to two, and caused complete chaos. It is impossible to see that happening under British Rail.
Last night I listened to an arresting lecture by Sir Paul Collier titled “Left Behind: How poor places can get trapped, and how they can catch up”. Collier, a very influential economist on public policy is currently writing a book on the ‘places left behind’ (such as Sheffield, where he was born, Zambia or parts of Colombia). I was surprised to find I agreed with so much of his approach (interdisciplinary; emphasis on contextualisation; the knowledge is within communities that will find the solutions; but he has low confidence in bureaucracies – the Treasury, the World Bank – to find solutions). He provided a statistical demonstration of the complete failure of the British state to fix the problems of the ‘places left behind’; a failure that makes us a negative outlier no just against the OECD, but among the worst states for achieving genuine social and economic mobility – in the world. He uses a phrase for Britain’s performance: “Enough is Enough”. He considers the public money put into British regional development is simply woefully inadequate. His measure here seems to be the German state’s decision on the re-integration of East Germany, effectively to allocate 10% of GDP for thirty years. In relative terms, Britain spends trivial amounts; it just isn’t serious.
Collier believes in three essential things I didn’t expect: evolutionary social psychology, moral philosophy, and decsion-making under uncertainty – which last I think broadly means being ‘roughly right’, over (Treasury, World Bank) – “precisely wrong”. This approach seems to flow from roots in Adam Smith’s ‘theory of Moral Sentiments’ and the Scottish Enlightenment.
These are rough comments from reflection (I did not take notes, unfortunately). I hope I have not done his views an injustice. Here is the surprise: he is advising Michael Gove on ‘Levelling up’.
Collier is quite right wing
He also has a poor record on delivery -rarely turning up to what he commits to
I can’t, of course speak to that; I know insufficent of the background. Discussing politicans, he said the PM he most admired was Clem Attlee; for what he achieved (not least for Collier’s own social mobility); and precisely because of Churchill’s famous take-down; when someone said Atllee was just boring, Churchill commented he had plenty to be boring about.
I do think that in the crisis we are in, we should look for points of commonality and muuality wherever they arise; if ideas or methods are usable, and provided only they work. His critique of Britain’s economy and social performance was damning. He suggested he was a pragmatist.
The Labour Party is in the hands of the Blairites. It has no intention of making the fundemental changes this country is crying out for. I have heard Blair say in a disparaging way he would never support a Left agenda. I thought ,naively I would not experience a Labour PM so wedded to war.
If the Labour leadership believes sticking with the neoliberalism of the last 43 years. Offering amelioration instead of real change to the voters he might well be disastrously wrong. Probably Labour will win the next GE ,but will be out of office after one term. The Tories will then have regrouped and be back to continue what they have done over four decades. George Orwell,writing in 1942 in his famous essay the Lion and the Unicorn derided the Labour Party for its lack of boldness. He accused them of being content to take their turn in power,sitting in Parliament and drawing their salaries. He pointed out the people yearned for something to give them hope. Socialism he said was the only way to win this war. He turned out to be absolutely right. Labour did offer fundemental change and won in a landslide. The Attlee Government ushered in a golden era. The Tories had no choice but to follow the same policies. I was one of the beneficiaries of that government. I lived through it as a child,a boy and a young man. I believe Starmer is influenced by two foreign states; the USA and Israel. As a member for six decades I am absolutely ashamed of his abandonment of the Palestinians.
There are two excellent documentaries on Al Jazeera that show clearly just how anti-Socialist and anti-Palestinian the Labour party has become.
“They were supposedly repayable in 1978. They were, of course, simply rolled over into new bonds that formed part of the national debt.”
Why were the bonds made repayable at all?
Technically this makes them more saleable as supposedly market value is easier to establish