2021-09-29
Nationalisation is in the air once more - industry cannot be trusted to run the rail franchises devised and handed out by the government's very own Department for Transport. SouthEastern is the latest to fall, apparently owing the odd £25 million to the government - for the past 7 years?! Did nobody notice?
But wait, there is more - much more. The government is replacing the whole franchising scheme to deliver "a simpler, effective model through high performance targets and simplified journeys". Well, they would say that wouldn't they?
When did any government ever shy away from centralising more control to itself on the basis that others can no longer be trusted to do the job? I'd say that the failure of the franchising system was of the government's own making.
First set up an "independent" industry that had little leverage over its primary supplier (Railtrack as it was then), remove the incentive to keep investing by ensuring that each franchise could be arbitrarily terminated at the end of the franchise period, destroy its customer base by lockdown, then do what it wanted to do on the basis that the system cannot work any more and the government must step in to save the day.
Yes, no doubt the case can be argued in many ways but the upshot looks very much like "more government" of the people by the political parties for the <insert your beneficiary here>.
Governments of all hues will rescue us from any situation that they themselves create, but who will rescue us from the government? The time has come that we need an answer to this question, and it is well overdue.
