Barry: Railing against privatisation

Nov 18 2009 by Barry Gibson, Huddersfield Daily Examiner

“So”, I said in my devil’s advocate role, “things would be a lot better today if you had honoured your 1997 manifesto commitment to re-nationalise the railways.”

Mr Sheerman replied that back then the Government had other priorities like education and that you can’t do everything you want. Which I think was his way of saying that he agreed with me.

But I don’t think it’s so much about spending priorities as ideology.

New Labour bought in to the Thatcherite view of the world that private is always good and public is always bad. Re-nationalise the railways? That’s a bit 1940s, darling, it would scare the swing voters in the shires.

For decades now, this view has been ingrained. If a public sector body does something wrong it’s because it’s a public sector body.

Some people, when their post arrives three days late, think “Bloody Royal Mail, it should be privatised”.

But they don’t apply the same logic to the private sector. If the guy in McDonald’s forgets to put cheese in their Big Mac they don’t think “Bloody McDonald’s, things will be much better when this place is the People’s Burger Palace”.

It’s long since time to abandon this view of the world. If the current recession has taught us anything, it’s that markets do not have all the answers. When the banks were in trouble, it was the good old-fashioned Government that stepped in.

Well the railways are in trouble as well.

Any chance of a rescue from this Labour government before it’s booted out of office next year?

Better 12 years late than never.