It is one thing to criticise the ways the railways have been sold off which Andrew Murray rightly identifies as a scandal. But he seems to offer no suggestion as to what a Labour government might do. ‘Renationalisation of the railways’ was a popular policy in the 2017 election but what precisely does it mean?
Network Rail, which owns the track and stations, is already in public hands and no government is going to spend several billion on buying back the rolling stock from the private companies which lease it out. That leaves the train operators who run the services but any sensible government will wait until the contracts run out which will take years. This is possibly why Mr Murray dodged the issue. The sad reality is that renationalisation, which I wholly support, is a long term aspiration which will bring about some important benefits but the difficulty of implementing it quickly means it will have little short term impact.