Time to renationalise all the railways

The government emergency nationalisation of the East Coast line shows what a shambles the private ownership of the railways is, and always was.

National Express who ran the rail line won the franchise from GNER in 2007, but were not making a profit, so they indicated that would simply walk away from the loss-making route, and not put further money in, after failing to blackmail the government into letting them alter the terms of their franchise agreement.

As transport Secretary Lord Adonis told the BBC: “The government is not prepared to renegotiate rail franchises, because I'm simply not prepared to bail out companies that are unable to meet their commitments. It is simply unacceptable to reap the benefits of contracts when times are good, only to walk away from them when times become more challenging.”

Yet the government learns nothing. It is still in principle commited to part privatisation of the Royal Mail, and the news today is that they are seeking to sell off Northern Rock before the election (perhaps to TESCO), despite the fact that ownership of the bank has been a useful public policy lever for the government to implement its financial policy

Britain's biggest rail union RMT today welcomed the renationalisation of the East Coast route.

RMT general secretary Bob Crow said: “RMT welcomes todays announcement by the Government on the renationalisation of the East Coast route but this shouldn't be a short term, crisis measure.

“It should be a long term solution to the chaos that privatisation has brought to the UK's most lucrative rail franchise.

“RMT's national AGM will send a clear message to the Government today that they should strip National Express of their other franchises and use this opportuinity to begin the process of renationalising the rail network,” said Bob Crow.

John McDonnell MP, RMT Parliamentary Group Convenor, said:

“The public control of the East Coast Mainline franchise should be a stepping stone to full and permanent public ownership.

“This East Coast franchise should be used as a public sector benchmark - and if the public sector performs better then let's have other franchises back in public ownership too.”