Nationalise MORE Than the Railways

We're not a socialist party, and we very rarely agree with Keir Starmer, but for once he's right! We have to agree with the basic idea of Labour's plan to nationalise the rail network, creating Great British Railways and bringing private train firms, such as Southern and Avanti West Coast, back into public ownership. 

As a general rule, it's far better to have the profit motive and private enterprise as the basis of economic ventures. But there are certain industries which are natural monopolies - the railways, electricity and water companies in particular. These are essential national infrastructure, as well as public utilities. Their privatisation was a theft and fraud against the public right from the start.

Turning such essential public services into profit centres for greedy corporations and financial 'rent-seekers' has led to a shocking decline in efficiency as well as disgraceful rises in prices. Our national infrastructure has been allowed to fall into chronic disrepair, while short-termist venture capitalists and foreign companies have bought up and asset-stripped our national common wealth.

Anyone old enough to remember the old nationalised British Rail will tell you that, contrary to all the Thatcherite and Blairite privatisation propaganda, BR was extraordinarily efficient and great value. Some of the rolling stock was old and a bit shabby, but trains were virtually NEVER late. The idea of a train being cancelled "due to lack of staff" was as unthinkable as services being stopped because of a bit of snow or "the wrong type of leaves on the line".

Likewise, the scandal of daily releases of huge quantities of raw sewage into our rivers and seas is a 21st century return to the bad old days before largely Conservative politicians such as Joseph Chamberlain laid the foundations of such services in the 19h century. Before the 1980s privatisation bonanza, such releases were unthinkable.

All such essential utilities and natural monopolies should be nationalised, and the Net Zero and similar lobbies should be got off their backs so they can get on with the job. Their managers should then be left alone to run them as businesses whose profits are ploughed, not into obscene executives' bonuses or foreign bank accounts, but into repairing and modernising the services on which we all depend.

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