His repetition of nothing more than Ed Miliband's policy on the railways is itself nothing more than playing catch-up.
And all that he is saying is that he would allow the State to bid.
(The British State, that is. Foreign states can already use these things to keep fares low in their own countries, and they do.)
Allowing the British State to bid will be Government and Conservative Party policy a year after Corbyn has won, and possibly only six months after he has done so.
This is not good enough. It is simply not good enough at all.
Like the 1997 Labour and Tory promise of a referendum on the euro (and the 1975 referendum on the Common Market) simply allowing the State to bid against others for railways is a way of avoiding taking any position on a divisive issue and devolving the responsibility to someone else.
ReplyDeleteIf we had a patriotic party instead of Labour and the Tories, it wouldn't devolve decisions over national independence to referenda or competitive bids (thus devolving political decisions to people or to the market) but would have actual policies on these issues instead.
Is that too much to ask?
That referendum on the euro turned out to be academic, a sop to Tony Blair. Britain would have joined the euro over Gordon Brown's cold, dead body, if then.
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