Jeremy Corbyn pledges rail renationalisation

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Indeed. If we took the idea of QE for investment, but engineered a small but regular repayment on the investment, for example a small proportion of rent from housing, or a toll from a new road, we wouldn't be any worse off than we are with current pfi or overseas funding, but at least the finance would flow back into this country, rather than to Beijing.

With regard to rent from housing, do you mean everything from the Housing Associations to the unregulated private sector rented housing?

 

[CdBrux]

As I understand it what was being suggested to the Chinese was that their construction companies take part in the bidding process to become a contractor, or part of a consortium, to build some bridges, tunnels, track etc... in phase 1. In other words seeing if they have knowledge to bring to the table at the right price. No doubt companies from countries accross the world will be also bidding. This seems to have been spun above as Chinese money building the thing!

 

[LLivery]

Its not just competition in services there is also competition in franchises as companies want to win franchises they will offer the best deal they can because if they don't they know that the Government will just choose someone else.

Companies also have their name to protect because after the NXEC fiasco lets face it National Express suffered from a bad image. The same was true for Veolia after they had the Connex franchise withdrawn. If British Rail provided a poor service could they loose their franchise? Would British Rail have such a bad reputation that it was no longer allowed to operate trains? If someone could offer better value for money than British Rail would the Government let them operate trains?

Southeastern - regarded as awful by 90% of its passengers, got a cosy franchise extension and makes one of the largest profits! After NXEC and NXEA, Abellio re-branded GA to AGA which seems to go completely against the brand protection idea as AGA is also hated by almost every user of it! To the normal passenger what you've just said doesn't seem to ring true. They all seem to fight for these franchises but to the normal person, little seems to change (apart from sacking guards and a re-paint). That's the problem. British Rail wasn't brilliant but at least we'd know who is responsible and that we wouldn't be paying stupidly high fares while they pocket profits for a rubbish service! That 3% can go elsewhere on the network or dare I say it be the figure our fares are reduced by.

 

[BRblue]

Considering you really don't understand the implications of what Corbyn is proposing then it's amazing you have the cheek to say that! Who exactly do you think this money Corbyn is creating will be paid back to?

Call me daft but I would of thought keeping our money in the UK instead of watching it disappear off to China would of been a better idea... but hey what would I know.
I just feel as a tax payer I would prefer to see my hard earned invested in this country, not paying China to do something we are more than capable of doing ourselves.

 

[yorksrob]

With regard to rent from housing, do you mean everything from the Housing Associations to the unregulated private sector rented housing?

Just those properties paid for through the QE process.

 

[zn1]

if this is going to happen it must happen as Directly operated services, so when the franchise ends - its taken over by DFT and then stays there, overnight renationalisation will be a fiscal nightmare, and cost billions in compensation etc...also is it just the TOCS/network rail back in public ownership, will DFT still lease from the roscos etc

its a minefield now - with so many fingers running the job...good luck Jezza , i wouldnt tackle it, id leave it as it is, and do it slowly -

 

[yorksrob]

if this is going to happen it must happen as Directly operated services, so when the franchise ends - its taken over by DFT and then stays there, overnight renationalisation will be a fiscal nightmare, and cost billions in compensation etc...also is it just the TOCS/network rail back in public ownership, will DFT still lease from the roscos etc

its a minefield now - with so many fingers running the job...good luck Jezza , i wouldnt tackle it, id leave it as it is, and do it slowly -

Jezza will have his work cut out ensuring that NR isn't flogged off.

 

[DarloRich]

Its not just competition in services there is also competition in franchises as companies want to win franchises they will offer the best deal they can because if they don't they know that the Government will just choose someone else.

Franchise selection is not economic competition it is simply a competition - I would suggest it has no direct impact on the passenger. Can i choose to switch my travel to a different provider if i don't like the service? I can with my phone/gas/electric etc. I cant with my train.

BTW - despite all of this "competition" how much have fares risen since privitisation? This "competition" doesn't seem to benefit us much.

Er, National Express runs every two hours with a variety of pick-up and set-down points with journey times varying between 3h10min to 3h25min. Prices (single) from £9 to £16.50.

There is also the motor car...

Or you could go to Peterborough by rail and connect to a not-AGA train there.

Or, if you a inadequately informed, you could walk...

You are doing what many do in these arguments and not comparing like with like. What competition is there for a rail v rail journey?

No they haven't. For a quick summary see page 8 of <http://www.raildeliverygroup.com/what-we-do/publications.html?task=file.download&id=649>. The summary is:



'In real terms' means the costs/prices have been corrected for inflation.

not according to the figures lodged with the house of commons library or published by the ORR or commented on in the media.

There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.
Benjamin Disraeli

 

[LateThanNever]

Considering you really don't understand the implications of what Corbyn is proposing then it's amazing you have the cheek to say that! Who exactly do you think this money Corbyn is creating will be paid back to?

As the implication seems to be that you do understand the implications why don't you enlighten me?

 

[thenorthern]

Southeastern - regarded as awful by 90% of its passengers, got a cosy franchise extension and makes one of the largest profits! After NXEC and NXEA, Abellio re-branded GA to AGA which seems to go completely against the brand protection idea as AGA is also hated by almost every user of it! To the normal passenger what you've just said doesn't seem to ring true. They all seem to fight for these franchises but to the normal person, little seems to change (apart from sacking guards and a re-paint). That's the problem. British Rail wasn't brilliant but at least we'd know who is responsible and that we wouldn't be paying stupidly high fares while they pocket profits for a rubbish service! That 3% can go elsewhere on the network or dare I say it be the figure our fares are reduced by.

Who are these 90%? According to the latest passenger surveys 74% of passengers on SouthEastern rated it satisfied or good and with Greater Anglia the figure was 80%.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

Call me daft but I would of thought keeping our money in the UK instead of watching it disappear off to China would of been a better idea... but hey what would I know.
I just feel as a tax payer I would prefer to see my hard earned invested in this country, not paying China to do something we are more than capable of doing ourselves.

Currently we buy far more from China than they buy from us.
We didn't get involved in the rebuilding of China as much as Germany or the US, as the banks thought the risks were too high.
The aim is to get China to invest in the UK to rebalance trade a bit. They are the ones with the capital.
Another tactic is to ensure there is decent competition for the construction contracts.
Either way they would employ plenty of Brits on the job and use a predominently UK supply chain.

 

[misterredmist]

An interesting article from The Independent from 1993 pre-privatisation......

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/u...how-on-earth-did-it-get-this-far-1464062.html

 

[jon0844]

Southeastern - regarded as awful by 90% of its passengers, got a cosy franchise extension and makes one of the largest profits! After NXEC and NXEA, Abellio re-branded GA to AGA which seems to go completely against the brand protection idea as AGA is also hated by almost every user of it!

We live in an age of social media where people can moan as freely as they like, seemingly with no consequences. They can say outrageous things and exaggerate things to extremes, and find fans who repeat what a relatively small number of people say.

They're the people who used to moan at home or at the pub and mostly get ignored. Now they have a platform.

I use AGA regularly now and can't understand the hate - but let's be honest, the people on Twitter that rant and set up 'anti AGA' websites are a MINISCULE percentage of AGA users as a whole.

In fact, I've barely been affected in over a year of regular travel by problems. Ironically, the one day I wanted to use LO, it wasn't operating (as it happens, it was a fault totally outside of LO or AGAs control, but I was still delayed).

Now social media is behind renationalisation but do we believe for one second that if we returned to BR, all the ranting and hate online would end?

When the first round of cuts come, or investment is shelved because it's a lot easier to sell a delay to new trains/station upgrades than a new hospital or school, you can be assured the hate will be just as bad (and just as exaggerated, I might add) as ever.

Imagine what BR would have suffered if the world wide web and social media had existed when it existed.

 

[tbtc]

Completely agree that funding would be more at the whim of the government of the day

I'd be scared if the railway were run totally at the whim of the current Government, given how shy they are of taking expensive long term decisions in areas that they do have direct control of.

I think if corbyn did become PM and remains committed to nationalizing it I would rather he kept the current system of franchising and created a public sector body which could bid against the private sector . Then we would really see if the Public sector could be more efficient . And if the experiment in nationalizing it did not work we could always go back to what we have now

That plan (one Miliband had) seemed a reasonable compromise.

The only problem is the cost of submitting bids (would it be worth a "DOR" spending a couple of million pounds of taxpayers' money every time there's a tender to bid for?) - but that process should really be cheaper/ simpler.

I don't think there's ever been a "not for profit" organisation (a co-operative, Union etc) tried bidding for a franchise before - its a model which seems to work in areas like Housing Associations.

This is more tongue in cheek but I must admit that I am a bit biased as well being a railway employee , I dont want my pension and salary and terms and conditions to become anymore politically divisive than they currently are . Look at what the current government are doing to the Pay and T's&C's of Junior Dr's

Imagine if rail staff had been treated like "public servants" over the past five years (seen their final salary pensions close to new accrual, seen their wages restricted to 1% regardless of inflation etc etc) - no wonder many rail staff are against nationalisation - despite how much the Unions pretend to want it!

I don't see why threads like these go on for so long, the simple answer to the question of re-nationalisation of the railways is plain, simple and clear.

The re-nationalisation of the Great Britain railway services not going to happen ever

We can argue about the benefits, downsides, speculation and theories about re-nationalisation but with a Conservative Government in Westminster and a Labour Party who who was in power for 13 years and in that time re-let ever franchise bar 2 its safe to say rail re-nationalisation is not going to happen.

I will be honest it really annoys me when Labour Politicians discuss re-nationalising the railways as its an pledge that they will probably never do even if they win power and it diverts the DfT's attention away from improving our railway network.

I'd also rather that we focussed on the "day job" rather than having these debates about state ownership, but I suppose you could argue that the railway is more nationalised now than at any time this century - e.g. Network Rail is on the government's books. That'd have been unthinkable at the millennium.

What's interesting is why railway nationalisation seems to resonate with a reasonable proportion of the public when arguably there are many other
priorities for intervention and regulation. I strongly suspect that this has a lot to do with the highly unpopular and poorly thought out nature of the original privatisation

...because it's a nice simple story/ argument with a nostalgic element - it can be used to supposedly solve 'everything'. It's often a nonsense argument, but simple arguments are.

A bit like the way that people think we'd solve everything if we came out of the EU/ brought back corporal punishment at school/ brought back the death penalty - the people who work in these areas (the ones with the evidence and experience) generally don't favour these measures, but it's an easy story to get across in a snappy soundbite.

With our short snappy attention spans, where minds start to drift half way through a tweet, someone selling a simple story will do better than someone who acknowledges that things are a bit more complicated than that.

"For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong" - H. L. Mencken

We do indeed.
But you need to look at the whole package.
Corbyn is on record as saying he'd 'gradually' renationalise railways.
And, especially important, he also proposes People's Quantitaive Easing and a National Investment Bank, which would mean the end of PFI and, until inflation restarts, would present the opportunity for new infrastructure or/and new training at virtually nil cost. He is the first person in any party to get that running the country's budget is quite unlike running a household budget. How many households print their own money?
Britain prints its own money and was thus able to throw £375bn at the banks interest free. Corbyn proposes initially about £50bn for the country not the banks, on a similar basis. What is not to like?

I like some of what Corbyn says - e.g. it's refreshing to see him refuse to sling mud about Cameron's University escapades (!) and stick to grown up things - senior economists seem to favour him over Osbourne's policies - and I agree that Thatcher's comparison of household/national economics is bogus - but this is "Magic Money Tree" economics, sorry.

There's also a difference between "the cost of saving the banks" and QE (which was more about trying to stimulate demand by encouraging financial organisations to move out of safe assets by purchasing those assets from them, in the hope that they'd use the money for other things) - though many Corbyn supporters like to conflate the two.

That said, people aren't hoodwinked when layers of cheap fares disappear that were there the previous year. To be fair, a lot of this is down to current Government policy demanding higher premiums over filling seats

Also known as reducing those nasty evil subsidies that posters like Railsigns point out so often...

I like the way that "Government gets higher premiums from private TOCs" is A Bad Thing (because it comes at the expense of passengers, and couldn't we use that money to permit cheaper fares)...

...whilst "Government gets lower premiums from private TOCs" is A Bad Thing (because it proves that privatisation is more expensive)!

Damned if they do...

The NHS is in such a mess because of the Thatcherist meme that "business" is the magic solution to every problem. It can't be privatised because there would be national outrage, so it has been forced into what is effectively a situation where it pretends to be a business and do businessy things. Like having more managers than medical staff and having them spend their time shoving around vast piles of paperwork concerning the utter nonsense and fairytales that accountants believe in. (And it literally is nonsense and fairytales; one example being our local hospital panicking about running out of budget and getting around it by deciding to believe in a slightly different version of the fairytale in question.) The state of the NHS does not constitute an argument against nationalisation; it does constitute an argument against being bloody stupid

The NHS is the best realistic benchmark for what a "nationalised" railway would look like in 2015.

It'd be a "state owned" railway but full of inter-department wrangling/ duplication/ over-managed/ wasting money. If you think that a private railway has millions of bean counters assessing delays attribution and that nationalisation would remove those costs overnight then take a look at how people fight over budgets/ costs in the "nationalised" NHS...

I don't buy that a nationalised railway would be better (or even that different) to a private one - it only seems to matter if you are the kind of person who has an ideological obsession with things being public or private.

The competition for franchises has brought lots of benefits to passengers, just look at how those fares have fallen.............. oh hang on:roll:

THAT is competition. It should, in theory, bring the price down. We all know it doesn't but.............

despite all of this "competition" how much have fares risen since privitisation? This "competition" doesn't seem to benefit us much

Well, "competition" seems to have increased passenger numbers at record rates - I'd use that as a definition of success...

Rail fares have risen exponentially since privitisation so perhaps BR tickets weren't so bad after all

I think a lot of people on this thread are too young to remember the kind of fare rises that BR used to impose - often as a way of choking off demand - it certainly wasn't a simple "RPI once a year" rise.

Has there been an announcement on who is going to run the HS2 trains as the most logical choice will be the holder of the WCML franchise but everything will have changed by then.

No idea - I'd suggest that we'll see the remains of the West Coast franchise (which will be reduced compared to today, given the amount of traffic moved onto HS2) merged with the "fast" LM services from Euston into once franchise - but that's a guess.

As I understand it what was being suggested to the Chinese was that their construction companies take part in the bidding process to become a contractor, or part of a consortium, to build some bridges, tunnels, track etc... in phase 1. In other words seeing if they have knowledge to bring to the table at the right price. No doubt companies from countries accross the world will be also bidding. This seems to have been spun above as Chinese money building the thing!

I'm not a huge fan of Osbourne and I'm not a huge fan of the Chinese regime - but if you want to build a big infrastructure project then it seems sensible to at least have negotiations with the kind of people who build lots of these kind of lines.

Whether we give them a blank cheque to do it is another story, but there's no harm in seeing if we can learn anything off a country who can build a hundred miles of high speed line in the time it takes us to repaint a station.

British Rail wasn't brilliant but at least we'd know who is responsible and that we wouldn't be paying stupidly high fares while they pocket profits for a rubbish service! That 3% can go elsewhere on the network or dare I say it be the figure our fares are reduced by.

Do you honestly think that nationalisation would see your fares go down?

Does anyone think it'd be a noticeable difference?

 

[HowardGWR]

- senior economists seem to favour him over Osbourne's policies -



I'm not a huge fan of Osbourne and I'm not a huge fan of the Chinese regime

I enjoyed reading your post - but it really is 'Osborne'. The other was where Queen Victoria died (not many people know that )

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

I enjoyed reading your post - but it really is 'Osborne'. The other was where Queen Victoria died (not many people know that )

I think you'll find they are both "Osborne".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_House

 

[DynamicSpirit]

I think you must be living on a different planet......


http://www.roadusers.org.uk/chapters/infrastructure-investments/

Without wanting to derail this thread too much, the selection of statistics presented there looks to me somewhat one-sided, because they are setting *all* benefits from the roads against only *some* of the costs. In particular, the only expenditure presented is Government expenditure on road maintenance. I would assume this means they are omitting expenditure on - for example - policing, the cost of accidents, medical treatment etc., and the cost to the NHS of ill health resulting from the impact of cars on life styles. Similarly, that website quotes an estimate for the economic benefit provided by road use, but does not balance that by providing any estimate for disbenefits (noise, pollution, etc.). This page arguably gives a much more complete picture of the costs of the road network, and concludes:

The total cost for the English urban areas is estimated at £38-49 billion. Given that the Cabinet Office’s report states that this covers 81 per cent of the population, scaling up the appropriate impacts gives an estimate of £43-£56 billion for the whole of the UK.

That is rather more than the £7.7 billion that roadusers.org.uk have come with as a result of their conveniently forgetting most of the costs!

I also notice that they try to compare investment in rail with investment in road, but it doesn't really work because the page provides figures for the economic benefit of roads but not for railways.

 

[hassaanhc]

We live in an age of social media where people can moan as freely as they like, seemingly with no consequences. They can say outrageous things and exaggerate things to extremes, and find fans who repeat what a relatively small number of people say.

They're the people who used to moan at home or at the pub and mostly get ignored. Now they have a platform.

I use AGA regularly now and can't understand the hate - but let's be honest, the people on Twitter that rant and set up 'anti AGA' websites are a MINISCULE percentage of AGA users as a whole.

In fact, I've barely been affected in over a year of regular travel by problems. Ironically, the one day I wanted to use LO, it wasn't operating (as it happens, it was a fault totally outside of LO or AGAs control, but I was still delayed).

Now social media is behind renationalisation but do we believe for one second that if we returned to BR, all the ranting and hate online would end?

When the first round of cuts come, or investment is shelved because it's a lot easier to sell a delay to new trains/station upgrades than a new hospital or school, you can be assured the hate will be just as bad (and just as exaggerated, I might add) as ever.

Imagine what BR would have suffered if the world wide web and social media had existed when it existed.

I agree with that so much. Most of those people only ever travel in the weekday peak, when it will always be busy. They will always exaggerate, or if they can't then just nit-pick. Appparently they "never" get a seat (funny how I ALWAYS get one when travelling from a terminus). Yet those people will be the same ones who behave as if they don't have any intention of finding a seat, like leaving the country end coaches empty but the London end ones bursting at the seams, or boarding a minute before departure. And those who find it incredibly outrageous that a train isn't running right-time to the second are in a class of their own :roll:.

Most of my travel on any TOC is off-peak, so 99% of journeys go smoothly, and a few minutes delay doesn't bother me.
Earlier this month I used Southeastern a few times (Charing Cross - Bexley return and Waterloo East > Eltham > Denmark Hill), and as usual everything was fine. Trains were clean, on time, and no issues finding a seat.
South West Trains I use regularly for travel to/from Hounslow, again trains within 2-3 minutes of time and always get a seat. Admittedly, almost anything wouldn't bother me on this line, because I know how civilised and calm this route is compared to the sardine cans on the Piccadilly Line. Having said that, the mainline is much more prone to issues than the Windsor group, and it is the mainline side that seems to get most of the complaints.

 

[misterredmist]

Without wanting to derail this thread too much, the selection of statistics presented there looks to me somewhat one-sided, because they are setting *all* benefits from the roads against only *some* of the costs. In particular, the only expenditure presented is Government expenditure on road maintenance. I would assume this means they are omitting expenditure on - for example - policing, the cost of accidents, medical treatment etc., and the cost to the NHS of ill health resulting from the impact of cars on life styles. Similarly, that website quotes an estimate for the economic benefit provided by road use, but does not balance that by providing any estimate for disbenefits (noise, pollution, etc.). This page arguably gives a much more complete picture of the costs of the road network, and concludes:





That is rather more than the £7.7 billion that roadusers.org.uk have come with as a result of their conveniently forgetting most of the costs!

I also notice that they try to compare investment in rail with investment in road, but it doesn't really work because the page provides figures for the economic benefit of roads but not for railways.

Strange that Local Govt Expenditure Stats for Roads & Highways declare expenditure on Roads, albeit just for England, of just below £5 BN for the current year..... No where near the figures you mentioned in your previous post...... it may be a little "off topic" - the point I am making is that people try and quote and hide behind stats that are clearly NOT true......
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---




If you read further down in this article , obviously, it is "wikipedia" so how factual it is I have no idea, but it all appears very balanced to me, lots of pro's , lots of cons too - but how anybody could make a cast iron case for re-nationalising the railway at this time would be beyond me...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privatisation_of_British_Rail

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Strange that Local Govt Expenditure Stats for Roads & Highways declare expenditure on Roads, albeit just for England, of just below £5 BN for the current year..... No where near the figures you mentioned in your previous post...... it may be a little "off topic" - the point I am making is that people try and quote and hide behind stats that are clearly NOT true......

That's not inconsistent with my point. I'm quite prepared to believe that £5BN is the correct figure for local Government expenditure on road maintenance etc. However, the point is that, if you want to figure out whether road tax fairly covers the cost of the roads, then it's not sufficient to only include direct expenditure on road maintenance - you'd need to try to account for all the costs to the economy of the roads, and road maintenance is only a small part of that.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

I'd also rather that we focussed on the "day job" rather than having these debates about state ownership

But is this exactly what this thread is supposed to be discussing, should the Corbyn plan come to fruition?
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

I think you'll find they are both "Osborne".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_House

Would the house have taken its name from Osborne Bay?

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

Would the house have taken its name from Osborne Bay?

Very likely, Paul.
I see from Google Maps the house beach front faced Osborne Bay.
I fear we are off topic here!

 

[HowardGWR]

I think you'll find they are both "Osborne".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_House

and the 'people who do know that' got it wrong!

Thanks LNW_GW Joint.

 

[LateThanNever]

I like some of what Corbyn says - e.g. it's refreshing to see him refuse to sling mud about Cameron's University escapades (!) and stick to grown up things - senior economists seem to favour him over Osbourne's policies - and I agree that Thatcher's comparison of household/national economics is bogus - but this is "Magic Money Tree" economics, sorry.

There's also a difference between "the cost of saving the banks" and QE (which was more about trying to stimulate demand by encouraging financial organisations to move out of safe assets by purchasing those assets from them, in the hope that they'd use the money for other things) - though many Corbyn supporters like to conflate the two.

Can't let the "Magic Money Tree" economics! go unanswered. It's an easy put down but do you know how economics work? Because if you do I reckon you are alone in the world.
We know that Britain prints its own currency. That we bought off the banks and used Quantitative Easing to get them lending again. The result is not lots of nice lending to small businesses - that's still less than before the crash - it is sky high house prices, bankers bonuses still preserved and - the thing everyone was convinced wouldn't happen, deflation. We've now got inflation of nil tho' Osborne has told the Bank of England he wants 2%. It has never delivered it - so much do they know about the economy! Additionally growth is extremely limited.
So the banks have eaten of the Magic Money Tree and have effectively lined their own pockets. Corbyn reckons its time for another strategy. Let the people eat of the Magic Money Tree and pay for some green technology, better broadband, social housing, enhanced training, better communications, abolish PFI and so on. This would create extra jobs and people in jobs buy more things and pay tax!
People think it's like printing money, which it is. But then so is every time the government issues gilts. But if issuing gilts is all fine and dandy how does doing it a different form make it somehow wrong? The argument is that the government shouldn't be doing things that the markets can do. Well as we've seen Drax doesn't want to do its new technology without government help, social housing is hardly built at all by any private companies, broadband needs speeding up - and so on.
Basically all Corbyn is saying is we need more investment in the UK. We control Sterling, we don't have to wait for others to do the investment. The same system will also provide a home for much pension fund money, whose value (as a result of their earlier fondness for stock market investment) has dropped off a cliff. Cannot believe they would not be delighted to find a safe home.
So not a Magic Money Tree - more of a Virtuous Circle!
It should have been done years ago.
It's even been reluctantly endorsed by the business editor of the Daily Torygraph so Mr Corbyn is not exactly in revolutionary company!

 

[thenorthern]

Slightly off topic but does anyone wonder if Sir John Major now regrets selling off the railways? Also do you think the current arrangement is how he envisioned a privatised railways would look?

I think at the time although many Labour MPs such a backbench Jeremy Corbyn as well as John Smith and others didn't want privatisation and made their feelings clear but were of the view that the Conservative Government in power would probably be the last for some time and the next Government would be a Labour which would reverse the whole process. Something that never materialised when Tony Blair won power in 1997.

This may seem a strange question also but wouldn't EU law prevent a full scale re-nationalisation and thus in effect only the franchised operators could be brought back into public ownership but open access would have to be allowed to stay. Also given the fiasco in 2012 when First was awarded the West Coast franchise does Jeremy Corbyn not realise that the current operators would not go without a fight and challenge any re-nationalisation in the courts.

 

[Gareth Marston]

Slightly off topic but does anyone wonder if Sir John Major now regrets selling off the railways? Also do you think the current arrangement is how he envisioned a privatised railways would look?

I think at the time although many Labour MPs such a backbench Jeremy Corbyn as well as John Smith and others didn't want privatisation and made their feelings clear but were of the view that the Conservative Government in power would probably be the last for some time and the next Government would be a Labour which would reverse the whole process. Something that never materialised when Tony Blair won power in 1997.

This may seem a strange question also but wouldn't EU law prevent a full scale re-nationalisation and thus in effect only the franchised operators could be brought back into public ownership but open access would have to be allowed to stay. Also given the fiasco in 2012 when First was awarded the West Coast franchise does Jeremy Corbyn not realise that the current operators would not go without a fight and challenge any re-nationalisation in the courts.

EU says nothing about private or public only that accounts between infrastructure and operations are transparent to allow open access. Private operators can do nothing at the end of a franchise it's the end of contract.

 

[satisnek]

Slightly off topic but does anyone wonder if Sir John Major now regrets selling off the railways? Also do you think the current arrangement is how he envisioned a privatised railways would look?

I think at the time although many Labour MPs such a backbench Jeremy Corbyn as well as John Smith and others didn't want privatisation and made their feelings clear but were of the view that the Conservative Government in power would probably be the last for some time and the next Government would be a Labour which would reverse the whole process. Something that never materialised when Tony Blair won power in 1997.

This may seem a strange question also but wouldn't EU law prevent a full scale re-nationalisation and thus in effect only the franchised operators could be brought back into public ownership but open access would have to be allowed to stay. Also given the fiasco in 2012 when First was awarded the West Coast franchise does Jeremy Corbyn not realise that the current operators would not go without a fight and challenge any re-nationalisation in the courts.

Major's original idea for rail privatisation was to have vertically-integrated regional companies, along the lines of the pre-BR 'Big Four', but then the whole thing got hijacked by the Adam Smith disciples and free market dogmatists and so we ended up with what we've got today. So no, he's probably not too happy about the way things have turned out.

As for the EU law, surely this is not dissimilar to the concept of 'running powers' in pre-nationalisation days?

 

[thenorthern]

EU says nothing about private or public only that accounts between infrastructure and operations are transparent to allow open access. Private operators can do nothing at the end of a franchise it's the end of contract.

I don't think they would go without a fight though and I think they would try and claim EU competition rules would prevent re-nationalisation.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---
Jeremy Corbyn was on East Midlands Today tonight talking about trains, apparently he wants to restart the electrification of the Midland Main Line and is a big fan of the railway works in Derby which he says we should be supporting.

I wonder if his plan to re-nationalise the railways would involve buying back the Derby Litchurch Lane works to reform BREL, I doubt it somehow but you never know.

 

[Gareth Marston]

I don't think they would go without a fight though and I think they would try and claim EU competition rules would prevent re-nationalisation.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---
Jeremy Corbyn was on East Midlands Today tonight talking about trains, apparently he wants to restart the electrification of the Midland Main Line and is a big fan of the railway works in Derby which he says we should be supporting.

I wonder if his plan to re-nationalise the railways would involve buying back the Derby Litchurch Lane works to reform BREL, I doubt it somehow but you never know.

The TOC owners can scream as much as they like but Corbyns plan is take franchises back as the expire, if you have a contract that expires in 2021 then you have no rights to anything beyond that date. TOC 's own nothing

EU competition rules ? ? Everybody else has state owned railways with some minor exceptions.

 

[thenorthern]

The TOC owners can scream as much as they like but Corbyns plan is take franchises back as the expire, if you have a contract that expires in 2021 then you have no rights to anything beyond that date. TOC 's own nothing

Thats what we thought with the West Coast Franchise in 2012 but that wasn't the case.

EU competition rules ? ? Everybody else has state owned railways with some minor exceptions.

Yep but they were state owned before, I can't see the EU allowing a nationalisation.