How just glorious the newly renationalised railways are going to be, eh?
It’s happening! Government is now fully back in charge the railways. How wondrous:
Thameslink is to cancel hundreds of trains this summer after being taken under government control.
Britain’s biggest train company, which also operates the Southern and Greater Northern franchises, will be nationalised on Sunday when the state takes ownership of Govia Thameslink Railway (GTR).
Labour pledged to place all passenger services under public control in its 2024 manifesto, saying at the time that it believed Britain’s railways “should be a source of pride, not exasperation”.
But ministers have asked train companies to reduce their services this summer in an effort to save money, and GTR will cut dozens of daily services from its schedules between July 18 and the end of August.
Isn’t that excellent? In fact, we might now have an explanation for this:
Rail usage near halved after nationalisation, then near tripled after privatisation. Clearly, it’s possible to have too much of a good thing which is exactly the problem renationalisation is going to solve. We are so lucky.
But that’s not all:
Labour ministers blocked train companies from buying cheap fuel in advance of the Iran war, insiders have claimed.
The Department for Transport (DfT) prevented rail firms from hedging their diesel purchases because doing so risked being seen as “gambling with taxpayers’ money”, senior railway insiders told The Telegraph.
A DfT spokesman described the claims as “misleading” and said the department had received no “formal” request from a train company to hedge fuel within the past two years.
The idea that a rail operating company requires government permission to hedge is absurd in itself. But as we’ve just pointed out hedging is not speculation - it’s the very opposite, the antithesis. To hedge is to gain a secure price, sticking the risk - the gamble - with the capitalists just playing with money.
Renationalisation is going to be so wonderful. For clearly central government is really good at running railways.
Tim Worstall