Labour wants to re-nationalise British Rail; Miliband open to it

MGWR

Manchester Guardian

Ed Miliband has come under pressure to bring the rail network back into national ownership if Labour wins the next election, as more than 30 of his party's parliamentary candidates call for a bold new policy to improve services and control train fares. ...

While Miliband has said he is interested in "innovative solutions" for the railways and is open to considering a greater degree of state control, shadow chancellor Ed Balls is said to be resistant to anything that would be portrayed by Labour's opponents as anti-business or a lurch back to the pre-Thatcher era of nationalised industries. ...

TheBandicoot

Logistically and politically I cannot see how it would be possible to renationalise that industry. There TOCs would oppose it every way they could I expect.

end of the road

TheBandicoot wrote: »

Logistically and politically I cannot see how it would be possible to renationalise that industry. There TOCs would oppose it every way they could I expect.

it won't happen, but if it was to, i'd imagine they would wait until each franchize is up and then bring them back under state control 1 at a time, rail privatization in the UK for all its faults has made governments realize that a working railway is better then a dead one, and that you have to give the railway the money to operate, that it can't run on a pittnce and provide a good service which BR was expected to do, in fairness BR for all its faults did try and where it could it ran a good service, but a lot of lines which are now thriving under privatization did lose out under BR as they hadn't enough money to operate enough services meaning passengers didn't travel (the old vicious circle) if only the british government realized that giving BR the money to operate the railway rather then starving it of cash who knows what they could have delivered

corktina

you mean British rail not British Rail.....and the Manchester Guardian was renamed at least 50 years ago

steamengine

As the Guardian article states it has already happened at a micro level with the re-nationalisation of GNER and this is being held up as being the model to follow because of its relative success. Interestingly the workforce is also unionised as I understand it.

end of the road

steamengine wrote: »

Interestingly the workforce is also unionised as I understand it.

i think all rail staff in the UK are unionized

GBOA

steamengine wrote: »

...it has already happened at a micro level with the re-nationalisation of GNER and this is being held up as being the model to follow because of its relative success.

It wasn't GNER that was re-nationalised, but National Express East Coast who walked away from the franchise.Indeed it has and from what I've read in the papers and online, many would like it to stay that way however, the ECML franchise is due to return to the private sector in January 2015, with the shortlist of contenders announced in January this year.

East Coast Trains Ltd (First Group)
Inter City Railways Ltd (Virgin & Stagecoach)
Eurostar East Coast Ltd (Eurostar & Keolis)

The successful bidder will be the first to utilise the new IEP trains currently being built by Hitachi which are due to replace the HSTs and eventually, the 225s on the line. With the HST power cars and Mk3s having been refurbed as recently as 2009, hopefully they'll remain for a while yet!

steamengine

From a wider article on privatisation from the Guardian today 06/05/14.

Clearly rail privatisation is not all that it was cranked up to be, except for some investors - that is !!!

........Above all there is rail, and the botched sell-off by John Major exactly 20 years ago has seen fares rise by between 100% and 200%. John Prescott and 40 Labour candidates are calling for Miliband to take back services, as 19 of the 25 franchises come up for renegotiation over the next five years. Prescott points to the doubling of the state subsidy that used to go to old British Rail: "Private train companies last year handed out £200m to their shareholders from the £4bn subsidy." Compare that to the nationalised East Coast trains, which "achieved greater punctuality, provided a better service and has given more than £800m back to the taxpayer". No wonder there is overwhelming public support for taking the franchises back – 66% – including among Tories. Instead the government is selling East Coast and Eurostar in February, just before the election – unless it can be stopped........

MGWR

steamengine wrote: »

From a wider article on privatisation from the Guardian today 06/05/14.

Clearly rail privatisation is not all that it was cranked up to be, except for some investors - that is !!!

That's because it's not real privatisation. It's a distorted form, where the state keeps ownership of the railways and the services are franchised off to preferred operators for fixed periods. That increases costs.

The Grauniad is a champion of re-nationalisation and certainly not a purveyor of unbiased journalism here.