Christian Wolmar

I do not generally have much sympathy for Bob Crow. He runs a union as a political project, and therefore much of what he says is obviously contradictory. He wants renationalisation and an end to private sector involvement, yet his constant threatening of strikes and his very confrontational style of negotiation means that not only is no one prepared to listen to what he says, but also that the last thing any government would want to do is to give his union more power by bringing transport more into the public fold. Take, too, bringing back Metronet in house which is what Crow wanted. Of course there are likely to be superfluous jobs and the management must be allowed to cut back on those. The whole point of bringing  it back in house is to make it more efficient and cut out the kind of duplication that was inherent in the PPP . By making life so difficult for TfL, Crow's is making it more likely that the government - or its successor - will seek some sort of PPP solution, ...