The hated Southeastern rail franchise has finally been cancelled after the private operators were caught stealing £25 million in public funds since 2014.
Despite a long track record of delays, cancelled services, appalling working conditions, strikes, and lamentable customer service, this woeful franchise had been repeatedly extended by the Tory government since 2014, but the axe has finally fallen to the relief of passengers across the south east.
It turns out the private profiteers were running the services so inefficiently that the only way they could even spin a profit was to embezzle public cash!
And similar to the failure of all the other private rail franchises over the years, the public sector is going to have to step in at the last minute to take over operations.
The most absurd example being the way private operators have abandoned the flagship north east mainline franchise three times, with the public sector taking over at the last minute each time, running the service better, and gradually returning profits to the public finances, only for the Tories to hand it over to another bunch of profiteers who cut and run again, as soon as it becomes unprofitable to them.
This endless cycle of private operators extracting the profits, and public cash being used to clear up their mess is entirely consistent with the Tory ideology of "privatise the profits, nationalise the losses".
As a result of this spectacularly failed rail privatisation agenda, not only does the rail network cost more in subsidies to private franchises than it did to run the entire rail network when it was privatised in 1994, the government has built up a secret £50 billion+ black hole of rail debt from renting the track out to these profiteers at miles below the actual cost of maintaining them.
An overwhelming majority of the public want to see the rail network renationalised, and run as an integrated not-for-profit public service.
Yet the Tories persist with this shambolic mess of private profiteers extracting profits, then offloading operations onto the public whenever the profitability dries up.
Labour should be absolutely hammering the Tories over this, not just on the principle that rail privatisation has proven to be an absolute disaster, but for the sheer incompetence of allowing a private rail operator to steal £25 million from under their noses.
But unfortunately Keir Starmer is too busy waging internal factional war against his own party to care about establishing a critical narrative, and his shadow finance minister Rachel Reeves has only just been pledging her undying loyalty to the interests of capitalist profiteers, by swearing she'll ignore economic common sense, and the will of the British people, when it comes to the need to renationalise vital national infrastructure.
Despite a long track record of delays, cancelled services, appalling working conditions, strikes, and lamentable customer service, this woeful franchise had been repeatedly extended by the Tory government since 2014, but the axe has finally fallen to the relief of passengers across the south east.
It turns out the private profiteers were running the services so inefficiently that the only way they could even spin a profit was to embezzle public cash!
And similar to the failure of all the other private rail franchises over the years, the public sector is going to have to step in at the last minute to take over operations.
The most absurd example being the way private operators have abandoned the flagship north east mainline franchise three times, with the public sector taking over at the last minute each time, running the service better, and gradually returning profits to the public finances, only for the Tories to hand it over to another bunch of profiteers who cut and run again, as soon as it becomes unprofitable to them.
This endless cycle of private operators extracting the profits, and public cash being used to clear up their mess is entirely consistent with the Tory ideology of "privatise the profits, nationalise the losses".
As a result of this spectacularly failed rail privatisation agenda, not only does the rail network cost more in subsidies to private franchises than it did to run the entire rail network when it was privatised in 1994, the government has built up a secret £50 billion+ black hole of rail debt from renting the track out to these profiteers at miles below the actual cost of maintaining them.
Yet the Tories persist with this shambolic mess of private profiteers extracting profits, then offloading operations onto the public whenever the profitability dries up.
Labour should be absolutely hammering the Tories over this, not just on the principle that rail privatisation has proven to be an absolute disaster, but for the sheer incompetence of allowing a private rail operator to steal £25 million from under their noses.
But unfortunately Keir Starmer is too busy waging internal factional war against his own party to care about establishing a critical narrative, and his shadow finance minister Rachel Reeves has only just been pledging her undying loyalty to the interests of capitalist profiteers, by swearing she'll ignore economic common sense, and the will of the British people, when it comes to the need to renationalise vital national infrastructure.
And to make matters worse the Tory Transport minister
It's never going to get better when both main Westminster establishment parties adhere to the warped and treasonous ideology that essential British infrastructure and services are better run by a mix of corporate profiteers and foreign governments, than by the British government on behalf of the British people.
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