Ministers will not get the rail system back on track until they allow individual train companies to manage their assets
No enemy of Tory policy is as savage as a Johnson Tory. Enter Grant Shapps, transport secretary. His proposed reincarnation of British Railways (ridiculously with “Great” attached) ends one of the major failures of modern British government. He accuses the botched Conservative privatisation of British Rail in 1993 of leading to “fragmentation, confusion and overcomplication”. In truth what killed it was not Tory doctrine but a far more lethal ideology: Treasury control.
The principle of a privatised railway was sound. Private companies had given Victorian Britain the finest train service in the world. By the 20th century it was atrophying through duplication and monopoly, and was effectively nationalised in the second world war. In public ownership, British Rail seemed overtaken by the motor car and starved of investment for electrification. By the 1990s, privatisation seemed the best answer.
