They debunk their own headline in the first few sentences, they’ll bring them into public ownership when the contracts expire, if the contracts expired why the hell would they pay them compensation?
Content behind paywall:
Labour will push ahead with the renationalisation of train operators, Louise Haigh, the shadow transport secretary, said on Wednesday.
She said the party plans to bring the railways into public ownership as private contracts expire, meaning operators would be in public ownership within five years. Because of the contracts expiring, the companies would not receive compensation.
Ms Haigh’s comments came as Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, prepared to launch a major drive to woo business.
In a speech to business leaders on Thursday, he will pledge to make them his “equal partner” in government, saying they deserve praise for “serving the national interest” and stressing that Labour is now the “party of business”.
Ms Haigh told GB News that Britain’s railways were “broken” and that Labour’s plan to fix them would “bring significant savings”.
She said: “I’ll be setting out our plans, actually in just two or three weeks’ time, which will demonstrate how we’ll save money and how that money will bring those operators into public ownership, all of them, within the first term of a Labour government.
“There’s absolutely no compensation provided to the operators.”
The plan was first conceived during Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of Labour, and a spokesman for the party said: “Our position remains the same – we will bring railways into public ownership as core contracts expire.”
This week, rail passengers’ journeys have been marred by strikes as members of Aslef, the the train drivers’ union, walk out across 16 companies.
In his speech, Sir Keir will launch a five-point plan for business and pledge that Labour will “do the hard yards, roll up our sleeves and get underneath the bonnet to fix an unprecedented stagnation in British productivity growth”.
The speech, in central London, echoes Tony Blair’s attempts to woo business in the run-up to the 1997 election. It will be attended by 400 senior business leaders, including FTSE 100 chief executives from a range of companies, as well as 200 international investors and ambassadors.
Labour has said tickets for the event sold out in four hours and hundreds were on the waiting list to attend.
Sir Keir will say: “The depth of the changes we’ve made to transform the Labour Party’s relationship with business is something I take immense pride in. Your presence here is a testament to the changes we have made over the past four years.
“So all the hard work that has taken us to this point is a vindication and a recognition of that guiding belief. Not just that Labour could be the party of business but that Labour should be the party of business, and that now, four years on, Labour is the party of business.”
The Labour leader will set out plans for skills to drive growth, the need to partner with business to make work pay for working people, backing British business and creating the stable economic conditions required for delivering growth.
He will say they are “five steps we can take together to begin our walk towards a Britain with its future back”, adding: “You can’t overstate what the British people have been through in the past 14 years. It’s not just the permanent cycle of crisis – there is something much more fundamentally broken in the way this country creates wealth.”
Richard Walker, the executive chairman of Iceland supermarkets and a former Conservative Party member, will be among the business leaders in attendance.
Mohamed El-Erian, the former chief executive of bond giant PIMCO and the president of Queens’ College, Cambridge, said it was vital for Labour to get business on side.
He added: “It’s important because we are a market-based economy where the private sector does most of the heavy lifting when it comes to promoting economic growth and employment. The government just doesn’t have the fiscal space to be a direct engine of growth.”
Nothing wrong with a policy which is widely approved by all branches of Labour (originally proposed under Corbyn so not even the most ardent Leftist should find fault). I supported it back then and I support it now. Hopefully Labour don’t drip feed too much more through though before the election is called. Tories are so out of ideas that it’s a guarantee that they’ll propose much of the same things (but obviously with some caveat that allows them to extract more money for their mates in the process).
Great…
Now about reducing fares and increasing reliability, not the other way around whilst parroting the same shit we’ve had for over a decade such as Grant Shapps..
“It’s vital we continue to invest in our railways”.
We’ve invested, it’s been fucked up year on year, ever increasing cost.
And fuck away with the stupid advance fare system. It doesn’t help anyone who doesn’t have the luxury of planning their work months in advance.
A season ticket for me to London is £11k currently… If I bought each day using 2x advance singles.. £28 a day, call it 200 working days a year.. £5,600. Great if I had the luxury.
Why is a season ticket double the cost of buying advance tickets, is it not advance?
I wonder what this actually means in reality though?
The train operators don’t own the stations, tracks, or trains (or maybe they own some?). They do manage staff contracts, which I guess will simply be transferred along with the train leases, but what will actually change in terms of ownership?
Hopefully some economies of scale kick in though, if they are willing to take on the unions..
Suuuure. They’ll do a token attempt, claim something isn’t viable, give up. The Tories drag them over hot coals for it and we are still stuck with overpriced trains.
The trains are pretty much renationalised already – tories just won’t admit it because its bad PR for their base.
As with many things, offensive legislation passed under cover of wartime is to thank for the disruption to our railways, which had up to that point been the envy of the world: prior to ‘nationalisation’ after WW2, the railways were placed under government control in the Great War, before that they were what is called ‘privately’ owned, which is to say they were owned by members of the public, not placed at the disposal of a government department.
Despite what soi-disant economists will tell you, if ‘ever and ever greater unit sizes’ bring more efficiency from the general perspective, they would not need legislation passed to ‘amalgamate’, ‘rationalise’ and ultimately ‘nationalise’ them. Any period literature will tell you that there were fond memories of the railways pre-WW1, never to be regained, but [perhaps this graph will be more communicative](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6d/GBR_rail_passengers_by_year_1830-2023.png).
Also consider that the Beeching blasphemies could never have been perpetrated under a system of genuine private ownership.
Look at public train systems in Europe. Germany and Spain even had variations of travelling for FREE just last year. Public ownership, if managed correctly, is faaaaar better than private ownership. Think of all of the billions of pounds that have gone into shareholders pockets since the 90s. It’s obscene. That is what has desolated our rail system. Those billions could have and should have been put back to improving our infrastructure. But some rich people took advantage and profited off of the county’s negligence to itself. And a lot of those that benefited were European governments.
Privatisation of essential public facilities should have never happened and the cost of living crisis we face today would be much less severe if it had been kept public. If you truly believe it benefits the country and not a small majority despite using them every day and complaining about the cost of everything then perhaps you should put down the Daily Mail.
Private company runs service into the ground. The private company should be compensating the tax payer. I have no issue with this . If anything it encourages me to vote labour next election for a change . Never voted for them previously.
Labour nationalise and build the business up with taxpayer money, tories privatise and hollow business out syphoning profits to private sector !
just another game of snakes and ladders with public cash !
It’ll be interesting to see how close nationalising the trains will get to the utopia some people think it’ll be.
The presumption that this is a good idea assumes that service has deteriorated since privatisation, which I think is a myth. But probably worth nationalising anyway, as better or worse, private owners haven’t delivered on expectations, and we deserve betters. Give big gov another shot.
Good.
Train operators do not have any value. They are throughput companies: money in, money out. They have no assets. Their brand is worth jack shit (as we have seen). They are easily replaceable.
Not sure that public ownership would make things better, though. The problem with our railway is the vertical segmentation, causing massive inefficiencies, not public vs private.
It’s been a litany of disasters every since the initial privatization. If you’re going to do it then you make it a single company to cover the entire nation otherwise you just end up with disconnected chaos. There’s no “competition” other than alternative forms of transport which the government can only discourage through laws/fees which only piss off travelers more.
What’s the point? Tories will just sell them off when they’re next in power.
Please put safeguards in place to ensure the public get a say on the sale of state assets.
Now the headline I could get behind…. The reality is also ok
About time they announced an actual policy. Even if it is just recycled Corbyn I’ll take it. Utilities next please.
I’m getting to the stage where train travel, which I rely on for appointments, is just unaffordable. That’s if and when they actually run.
I would take them back without compensation and also likely make a couple of arrests for corruption depending on where that money has gone
And because I’m in charge if those laws don’t exist I would make them!
What a PoS title
– Why the hell should they deserve compensation
– They’re just allowing contracts to expire without renewing them, as is their right
– This makes total sense and is a very popular policy
I think this is a fantastic idea, with one potential pitfall.
Once the companies know they won’t be able to bid for a new contract, they will have zero incentive to prove themselves as a worthy operator, which means zero investment and probably a bare minimum ticking-over spend. This means the service will likely go to shit for the last 2-3 years, or longer if the state then has to bring it back to standard. A fair sacrifice in my view. However, this may happen just as another election comes around, and I can easily imagine the opposition Tories using it as an example of Labour mismanagement, despite it being a foreseen and temporary effect. With enough wilful ignorance from the tabloids, it might start to work.
22 comments
They debunk their own headline in the first few sentences, they’ll bring them into public ownership when the contracts expire, if the contracts expired why the hell would they pay them compensation?
Content behind paywall:
Labour will push ahead with the renationalisation of train operators, Louise Haigh, the shadow transport secretary, said on Wednesday.
She said the party plans to bring the railways into public ownership as private contracts expire, meaning operators would be in public ownership within five years. Because of the contracts expiring, the companies would not receive compensation.
Ms Haigh’s comments came as Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, prepared to launch a major drive to woo business.
In a speech to business leaders on Thursday, he will pledge to make them his “equal partner” in government, saying they deserve praise for “serving the national interest” and stressing that Labour is now the “party of business”.
Ms Haigh told GB News that Britain’s railways were “broken” and that Labour’s plan to fix them would “bring significant savings”.
She said: “I’ll be setting out our plans, actually in just two or three weeks’ time, which will demonstrate how we’ll save money and how that money will bring those operators into public ownership, all of them, within the first term of a Labour government.
“There’s absolutely no compensation provided to the operators.”
The plan was first conceived during Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of Labour, and a spokesman for the party said: “Our position remains the same – we will bring railways into public ownership as core contracts expire.”
This week, rail passengers’ journeys have been marred by strikes as members of Aslef, the the train drivers’ union, walk out across 16 companies.
In his speech, Sir Keir will launch a five-point plan for business and pledge that Labour will “do the hard yards, roll up our sleeves and get underneath the bonnet to fix an unprecedented stagnation in British productivity growth”.
The speech, in central London, echoes Tony Blair’s attempts to woo business in the run-up to the 1997 election. It will be attended by 400 senior business leaders, including FTSE 100 chief executives from a range of companies, as well as 200 international investors and ambassadors.
Labour has said tickets for the event sold out in four hours and hundreds were on the waiting list to attend.
Sir Keir will say: “The depth of the changes we’ve made to transform the Labour Party’s relationship with business is something I take immense pride in. Your presence here is a testament to the changes we have made over the past four years.
“So all the hard work that has taken us to this point is a vindication and a recognition of that guiding belief. Not just that Labour could be the party of business but that Labour should be the party of business, and that now, four years on, Labour is the party of business.”
The Labour leader will set out plans for skills to drive growth, the need to partner with business to make work pay for working people, backing British business and creating the stable economic conditions required for delivering growth.
He will say they are “five steps we can take together to begin our walk towards a Britain with its future back”, adding: “You can’t overstate what the British people have been through in the past 14 years. It’s not just the permanent cycle of crisis – there is something much more fundamentally broken in the way this country creates wealth.”
Richard Walker, the executive chairman of Iceland supermarkets and a former Conservative Party member, will be among the business leaders in attendance.
Mohamed El-Erian, the former chief executive of bond giant PIMCO and the president of Queens’ College, Cambridge, said it was vital for Labour to get business on side.
He added: “It’s important because we are a market-based economy where the private sector does most of the heavy lifting when it comes to promoting economic growth and employment. The government just doesn’t have the fiscal space to be a direct engine of growth.”
Nothing wrong with a policy which is widely approved by all branches of Labour (originally proposed under Corbyn so not even the most ardent Leftist should find fault). I supported it back then and I support it now. Hopefully Labour don’t drip feed too much more through though before the election is called. Tories are so out of ideas that it’s a guarantee that they’ll propose much of the same things (but obviously with some caveat that allows them to extract more money for their mates in the process).
Great…
Now about reducing fares and increasing reliability, not the other way around whilst parroting the same shit we’ve had for over a decade such as Grant Shapps..
“It’s vital we continue to invest in our railways”.
We’ve invested, it’s been fucked up year on year, ever increasing cost.
And fuck away with the stupid advance fare system. It doesn’t help anyone who doesn’t have the luxury of planning their work months in advance.
A season ticket for me to London is £11k currently… If I bought each day using 2x advance singles.. £28 a day, call it 200 working days a year.. £5,600. Great if I had the luxury.
Why is a season ticket double the cost of buying advance tickets, is it not advance?
I wonder what this actually means in reality though?
The train operators don’t own the stations, tracks, or trains (or maybe they own some?). They do manage staff contracts, which I guess will simply be transferred along with the train leases, but what will actually change in terms of ownership?
Hopefully some economies of scale kick in though, if they are willing to take on the unions..
Suuuure. They’ll do a token attempt, claim something isn’t viable, give up. The Tories drag them over hot coals for it and we are still stuck with overpriced trains.
The trains are pretty much renationalised already – tories just won’t admit it because its bad PR for their base.
As with many things, offensive legislation passed under cover of wartime is to thank for the disruption to our railways, which had up to that point been the envy of the world: prior to ‘nationalisation’ after WW2, the railways were placed under government control in the Great War, before that they were what is called ‘privately’ owned, which is to say they were owned by members of the public, not placed at the disposal of a government department.
Despite what soi-disant economists will tell you, if ‘ever and ever greater unit sizes’ bring more efficiency from the general perspective, they would not need legislation passed to ‘amalgamate’, ‘rationalise’ and ultimately ‘nationalise’ them. Any period literature will tell you that there were fond memories of the railways pre-WW1, never to be regained, but [perhaps this graph will be more communicative](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6d/GBR_rail_passengers_by_year_1830-2023.png).
Also consider that the Beeching blasphemies could never have been perpetrated under a system of genuine private ownership.
Look at public train systems in Europe. Germany and Spain even had variations of travelling for FREE just last year. Public ownership, if managed correctly, is faaaaar better than private ownership. Think of all of the billions of pounds that have gone into shareholders pockets since the 90s. It’s obscene. That is what has desolated our rail system. Those billions could have and should have been put back to improving our infrastructure. But some rich people took advantage and profited off of the county’s negligence to itself. And a lot of those that benefited were European governments.
Privatisation of essential public facilities should have never happened and the cost of living crisis we face today would be much less severe if it had been kept public. If you truly believe it benefits the country and not a small majority despite using them every day and complaining about the cost of everything then perhaps you should put down the Daily Mail.
Private company runs service into the ground. The private company should be compensating the tax payer. I have no issue with this . If anything it encourages me to vote labour next election for a change . Never voted for them previously.
Labour nationalise and build the business up with taxpayer money, tories privatise and hollow business out syphoning profits to private sector !
just another game of snakes and ladders with public cash !
It’ll be interesting to see how close nationalising the trains will get to the utopia some people think it’ll be.
The presumption that this is a good idea assumes that service has deteriorated since privatisation, which I think is a myth. But probably worth nationalising anyway, as better or worse, private owners haven’t delivered on expectations, and we deserve betters. Give big gov another shot.
Good.
Train operators do not have any value. They are throughput companies: money in, money out. They have no assets. Their brand is worth jack shit (as we have seen). They are easily replaceable.
Not sure that public ownership would make things better, though. The problem with our railway is the vertical segmentation, causing massive inefficiencies, not public vs private.
It’s been a litany of disasters every since the initial privatization. If you’re going to do it then you make it a single company to cover the entire nation otherwise you just end up with disconnected chaos. There’s no “competition” other than alternative forms of transport which the government can only discourage through laws/fees which only piss off travelers more.
What’s the point? Tories will just sell them off when they’re next in power.
Please put safeguards in place to ensure the public get a say on the sale of state assets.
Now the headline I could get behind…. The reality is also ok
About time they announced an actual policy. Even if it is just recycled Corbyn I’ll take it. Utilities next please.
I’m getting to the stage where train travel, which I rely on for appointments, is just unaffordable. That’s if and when they actually run.
I would take them back without compensation and also likely make a couple of arrests for corruption depending on where that money has gone
And because I’m in charge if those laws don’t exist I would make them!
What a PoS title
– Why the hell should they deserve compensation
– They’re just allowing contracts to expire without renewing them, as is their right
– This makes total sense and is a very popular policy
I think this is a fantastic idea, with one potential pitfall.
Once the companies know they won’t be able to bid for a new contract, they will have zero incentive to prove themselves as a worthy operator, which means zero investment and probably a bare minimum ticking-over spend. This means the service will likely go to shit for the last 2-3 years, or longer if the state then has to bring it back to standard. A fair sacrifice in my view. However, this may happen just as another election comes around, and I can easily imagine the opposition Tories using it as an example of Labour mismanagement, despite it being a foreseen and temporary effect. With enough wilful ignorance from the tabloids, it might start to work.