Labour promises rail nationalisation within five years of coming into power

speckyget said:
I think complexity depends on how robustly you're prepared to deal with the grifters who took over these enterprises.
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And when the grifters are foreign companies.....does the government risk a potential political falling out dealing with them.....?
 
AcklamAngel said:
The biggest problem with nationalising the railways is the government will have to buy them back, with what money? There will be more strikes than there are now, will end with the public being shafted heavily.
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the rail infrastructure is owned by network rail isn’t it, which is government owned. So we wouldn’t need to buy that back just ensure that the rules around how that organisation operates are stronger.

The big problem is the largely foreign owned companies that own the franchises that operate on our railways. I think they own the rolling stock as well as contracts to operate. Given a long enough period of time we can wait for contracts to run down and then not offer them out to contract again…but we would need to invest in rolling stock I guess which is where the expense is along with the contracts to maintain them, unless the DofTransport are going to employ thousands of engineers and buy up maintenance yards etc
 
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LessoftheLip said:
A policy everyone should be happy with.

www.theguardian.com

Labour promises rail nationalisation within five years of coming to power

Party pledges to bring all passenger rail – but not rolling stock – into public ownership as contracts with train operators expire
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com
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Sounds good on the face of it!

Will say I have my doubts... Reeves has said explicitly before that they won't nationalise rail travel, and Starmer has form for dropping pledges and for being duplicitous with his wording on common ownership vs public ownership vs nationalised. And even that article seems to have a lot of caveats...

But if they actually stand by that policy and do it. (y)(y)
 
BoroMart said:
The big problem is the largely foreign owned companies that own the franchises that operate on our railways. I think they own the rolling stock as well as contracts to operate. Given a long enough period of time we can wait for contracts to run down ....
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Rolling stock is owned by (mainly) 3 rolling stock companies, who then lease to the train operators.

Rolling Stock companies

I guess you don't need to buy them to run the services .... yet. As the RMT say, another racket though.

So the UK (unique in the world I think) has a system where:

- 1 company (network rail) own/maintain the track
- 3 companies own the rolling stock
- multiple companies operate the services

... and, surprise, surprise, the contracts run to 1000s of pages ...
 
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It’s a smart move by Labour as the conservative media can’t attack it with lies.

Wait until contracts expire and make the service like the usually very good East Coast mainline. Labour can aim to improve journeys, reduce ticket prices with the aim of reducing cars on the roads and boasting productivity.

If Labour has a good many years in government the next aim should be abolishing private companies having the rolling stock too.
 
AcklamAngel said:
The biggest problem with nationalising the railways is the government will have to buy them back, with what money? There will be more strikes than there are now, will end with the public being shafted heavily.
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A government does not tax to spend. Any UK government can create money. It’s the benefit of having a bank and currency.

Stop falling for the bull**** from mainly Tory politicians that the country finances is like a household. It isn’t.
 
All for it… although I’d like to see the finances of these rail companies… this better not be some convenient buy out, disguising a tax funded bail out as nationalisation. That would **** me off no end!
 
SuperStu said:
Sounds good on the face of it!

Will say I have my doubts... Reeves has said explicitly before that they won't nationalise rail travel, and Starmer has form for dropping pledges and for being duplicitous with his wording on common ownership vs public ownership vs nationalised. And even that article seems to have a lot of caveats...

But if they actually stand by that policy and do it. (y)(y)
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I think this is where people need to take the announcement at face value Stu. It's not an announcement from Starmer or Reeves. It's from Louise Haigh. It's the sort of policy Labour has been criticised for NOT announcing in the run up to the GE.

Incidentally it has the support of Mick Lynch and the RMT.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1783248554674344390
 
speckyget said:
Not that this is wrong per se, but water surely the priority?
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Both are a priority, hundreds of millions a year being drained from the government for rail franchises heading into mainland Europe as our trains are owned by European companies.

Water is a basket case as well and needs nationalisation asap
The Tories have sat back and happily ignored our privatised public services get raped of taxpayers money and people have had enough I think
 
More importantly than just brining in to public ownership is making sure you have the right person overseeing it,l.

Let’s not make the mistake of looking back at British Rail with rose tinted glasses, the service was appalling and the whole thing was a national joke with the slogan ‘we’re getting there’ being constantly ridiculed (and don’t get me started on the sandwiches which were the stuff of That’s Life legend)
 
True, nationalised rail is far from perfect. I use both DSB and DB a lot lately. DB is frequently late but extremely cheap and DSB is far from cheap but it does run pretty smooth and when it goes wrong, the efforts made to fix it (From info on alternate trains to the ease of claiming back delay repay) are very good. I jsut think it would be an improvement. Our rail prices are cripplingly bad. To the extent it's usually cheaper to fly up north or to edinburgh than it is to get the train. That shouldn't be right.
 
LessoftheLip said:
I think this is where people need to take the announcement at face value Stu. It's not an announcement from Starmer or Reeves. It's from Louise Haigh.
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Tbh thats partly what makes me doubt it. I'd prefer Starmer to do a media round where he's personally committing to a policy like this. Rather than it just be a shadow minister you can easily see him shuffling out post election anyway.

LessoftheLip said:
It's the sort of policy Labour has been criticised for NOT announcing in the run up to the GE.
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Absolutely. I genuinely hope they stick to it and that I have to eat a load of humble pie while they're in gov.

Pak_Doo_Ik said:
Let’s not make the mistake of looking back at British Rail with rose tinted glasses, the service was appalling and the whole thing was a national joke with the slogan ‘we’re getting there’ being constantly ridiculed (and don’t get me started on the sandwiches which were the stuff of That’s Life legend)
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I'm not old enough to have first hand experience of it, but when people bang on about the sandwiches being some big problem it does make me wonder how bad the old British Rail could have been.

In any case, surely the more sensible examples to compare to are TFL and LNER now rather than anything from 40 odd years ago.
 
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