By johnredwood on April 27, 2025

                    The last government allowed drift in the arguments about nationalisation. They decided a fully nationalised railway might be less bad than a largely nationalised one. They failed to explain that Labour had nationalised the main assets of our railway , all the track, signals and stations. They failed to point out the so called private sector train companies had to accept timetables, fares and capital expenditure plans  laid down by government officials. They failed to remind people that in the early years of a largely privatised railway before the government took over Railtrack and made most of the decisions about trains  passenger numbers surged and services improved. There had been decades of losses, passenger  decline and poor punctuality at British Rail.

They failed to mention the fact that the biggest disaster, a new railway from London to the north, so delayed and over budget it would never reach the north , was fully nationalised throughout. As they failed to get the establishment to right the wrongs and pay the compensation promptly to the Post Office staff sent to prison they never mentioned this business had always been nationalised. It had hit a new low in the way a nationalised industry harms employees and mugs taxpayers. As Ministers rightly condemned the water industry for sewage dumping in rivers they did not point out that the industry had regional monopolies with a Regulator so keen to keep the bills down they did not allow much investment in new reservoirs, treatment works and more pipe capacity the businesses needed. They declined to introduce competition to make the companies perform better though we have competition in gas with a single pipe to each house. The new government is worse. It seems to want nationalisation.It cannot possibly afford to buy most of the assets it might like to own, and simply taking them would end most inward investment into the UK if property rights are torn up. Its steel adventure will probably end with the unwelcome closure of two old blast furnaces they will not renovate or replace, a huge bill for taxpayers and lawsuits with the Chinese owners.

Sir John Redwood