What features of nationalisation first attracted you to it?

By Sir John Redwood on August 2, 2025

Given the enthusiasm of some here I ask why are you in love with nationalisation?

Is it the way the nationalised Post Office treated many of its key staff, sending them to prison on false charges?

Is it the way nationalised HS2 has not controlled costs, extended its delays and more than halved the amount of railway it will deliver?

Is it the way the Bank of England ( Nationalised 1946) has run its activities to send a bill to taxpayers for an OBR forecast of £257 bn for losses on bonds from end 2022 to final liquidation of the portfolio?

Is it the way the state has paid remuneration packages of more than £500,000 a year to the Heads of HS 2, Post Office and Bank for all their losses and mistakes?

Is it the way Network Rail and the Transport department have run timetables, created delays and cancellations and regulated fares for the last two decades of nationalised Network Rail?

Is it the way the Highways Authority handled allowing motorway hard shoulder use as a new lane and their repairs schedules with slow running and lane closures?

Is it the way a nationalised Scunthorpe steel works will probably close both blast furnaces and sack a lot of staff?

Is it the way the government road monopoly keeps us short of road space and delights in restricting its use?

Sir John adds -

Reform and Lib Dem

on July 25, 2025

As I have offered a rare post on the official Opposition I am offering a couple of posts on the Lib Dems and Reform. In the last General election the Lib Dems got 12% of the vote and 72 seats. Reform got 14% of the vote and 5 seats. In recent polling Reform has surged to 30% and Lib Dems are around 11%.

Both these parties support a big change to our electoral system, favouring some variant of Proportional representation. The Lib Dems made a referendum on the alternative vote system a prime demand before entering Coalition in 2010. The public decisively rejected it. The Lib Dems now argue there are better systems.

I would urge both parties to drop this key demand. The Lib Dems disproved one of their own arguments about themselves for PR in 2024 . They say letting the person with most votes win results in unfair representation for smaller parties.Yet Lib Dems with 12% of the votes won nearly 12% of the seats. It is true the Reform vote was widely spread so they got nothing like their vote share. Conservatives also got fewer seats than vote share, but as the Lib Dems showed this is not always the outcome. Challenger parties under our system can target and win more seats.

The big reason to drop the policy is PR in a 4-5 party system will usually result in no party having a majority. Any party wanting a share in government has to abandon their Manifesto and promise to hammer out a compromise government programme with others. Voters are ignored as pledges are dumped in the scramble for power.That is less democratic,as the continent shows.

Campaigning for PR by parties that lost the last election can make them look like a bad loser. If by any chance the two parties pro PR did win a combined majority of seats they would be able to vote through a PR measure given party discipline in the early days. Some of their MPs might be concerned that PR would lose them their seats at the next election. If they declined they then appear as more politicians who do not truly believe in the big ideas they propose.

If a party that believed in PR won a majority under our current system they might be tempted to break their promise to introduce PR.