I'm going to be highly cynical here.
In recent weeks there has been talk that things have picked up and in the short term future lots of new trains will be rolled out and that it makes it a very good time for the government to actually do something. They probably decided that if they took charge earlier then there would have been a lot of stuff they would not be able to solve quickly and people might start pointing fingers at the people who are actually to blame for the majority of the issues. Obviously that could never be allowed, so the government probably worked out the time that they could take over so they get the minimum of blame for problems during their time and the maximum of praise from the improvements which are coming up.
The simple fact is the current system like academies in the education sector, is one that is designed to ensure that the operator carries the can for everything that goes wrong whilst making sure that the people who are the root cause of many (but not all) of the issues do not take any of the flack, because the average member of the public doesn't understand what is going on behind the scenes and how operators are being let down by a lack of promised infrastructure being delivered in the same way that academies are struggling in the education sector, in some part due to poor management but in a lot of cases in good schools, due to a squeeze on funding that isn't apparent to many in the public eye.
The Tory government policy has always been to try and take credit for the things that go well whilst trying to lay all of the blame at the operators, even when the operators have been screwed over by incompetent politicians, a department of transport with no clue and also failed to provide relevant infrastructure. Some operators haven't helped themselves and can't blame everything on the DfT and Network Rail and of course, if Northern Rail was in the south of the country, nothing would have been done whatsoever because all this is about keeping Tory voters happy in the north and no more and no less.
Northern Rail had many faults, but today's decision is influenced by nothing more than ensuring the Tory vote holds up in the North of England. By stripping Northern of their franchise, it allows them to play the false narrative that everything was down to Northern and they are addressing it, so people don't get through to the root of the problem, since they've been thrown a scapegoat instead of blaming-the department of transport itself.
The Rail industry has no hope of reaching it's potential in this country when the Tories are more obsessed with trying to play this stupid nationalise the praise and privatise the blame game. Yes Northern Rail have made mistakes but so have the DFT, but time and time again we see the DFT failing to be held account for it's actions and the Tories determined to protect it from any blame, hang the operators out to dry for the whole shebang so the DFT get away scot-free with their errors every time.
Every time a TOC messed up we see it carry the can for it's own mistakes and the DFTs. When is the DfT ever going to take responsibility and carry the can for it's own mistakes?
