The Common Sense Path

Evidently the Voice of Middle Britain, the Morning Star editorialises:

A government guided by common sense would respond to news that publicly owned Royal Mail has increased profits to £403 million by scrapping plans to flog off the service. Not so the conservative coalition, which remains determined to sell it to the highest bidder come what may. The fact that Royal Mail has turned a healthy profit - cash that goes straight into the state's coffers - is down in no small part to the increasing workloads and "rationalisation" foisted on postal workers. 

They, and all of us through higher stamp prices, have picked up the tab for the EU's enforced market. The bloc's apparatchiks justify this by claiming it will drive innovation in the "electronic age." What it means in practice is private investors cherry-picking the juiciest business and ignoring the expensive bits. Royal Mail - and its shrinking, hard-pressed workforce - does the heavy lifting by actually delivering the privateers' letters and maintaining the costly universal service.

The bluster and hoo-hah from Tories over the European Union in recent weeks cannot mask their shared belief in handing to City slickers everything that moves, no matter the logic. That agenda is precisely the big business-allied European Commission's view, as enshrined in a raft of directives enforcing competition and encouraging privatisation. Isn't it funny that not a peep of protest emerges from the Conservatives about this undemocratic imposition drawn up behind closed doors by a small cabal? 

As for EU fanboy Nick Clegg, he agrees with Cameron. Not since the nationalisation of banking debts to bail out the City, while leaving profits in private hands, has there been a more blatant example of the ideological bankruptcy of the snake oil salesmen who hold the reins of power nationally and internationally. The shysters behind this flaky deal reckon they'll raise around £3 billion by selling Royal Mail. At the current rate of profit that's about the same as holding on to it for seven years. We'll get something out of it, of course - the taxpayer will be left holding the pensions liabilities. Thanks a bunch.

Owners chasing short-term profits in water, gas, electricity and rail privatisation, among other sectors, have created a financial disaster for ordinary people while funding the extravagant lifestyles of a gilded few in the City. The state is being driven to bankruptcy while privateers have stockpiled £750 billion in cash. 

Despite relentless right-wing propaganda the public mood has shifted. People are sick of this rip-off. Today trade unions spoke with one voice to reject the quick-buck mentality that drives plans to flog off our postal service. From tomorrow workers on the ground will add their voice to the debate as CWU ballots its members on proposals to boycott private mail firms' deliveries and oppose privatisation. 

Labour now has an opportunity to show its mettle by drawing a line in the sand on post, and seeking the return to public ownership of other key parts of the economy. That would mean rejecting the outright lie that private equals efficient, public equals inefficient. It means being bold and cocking a snook at the greedy financier types and their EU bedfellows feathering their nests at the taxpayers' expense. Cut them out of the loop and not only do our coffers get a boost, but we regain control over our common resources.

Do that and we have the strategic levers to generate an economic revival. The common-sense path really couldn't be clearer.