Unfortunately privatisation has not worked

Discussion on the Guido Fawkes microblog on what should be done with the railway network.

Privatisation in the late 1990s was botched.  Both parties were to blame for this.  The Conservatives rushed weak legislation through before an election they knew they would lose; Labour allowed the newly privatised rail companies to flounder without support because they were ideologically opposed to denationalisation (not Blair of course, but in the early days Blair was timid and afraid of backbenchers like Gwyneth Dunwoody).

Nationalisation of the railway network in the Second World War produced a behemoth corporation that eventually became tired, starved of funding, completely demoralised.  The organisation benefited in the immediate post-war period from the influx of ex-forces officers and NCOs who saw in the railways a substitute for the wartime experience of central planning, public service and personal sacrifice (anti-social hours, low pay, endless complaints from the public).  From the 1980s onwards these "wartime" managers and supervisors retired, and the industry failed to recruit new staff of comparable quality.

The corporation also suffered from excessive "closed shop" unionisation, with three trade unions (often fighting among themselves) regularly bringing the country to a standstill, each national strike seeing a permanent transfer of freight traffic from rail to road.

By the 1990s radical action and reinvention was required, resulting in privatisation.

Unfortunately privatisation has not worked, and most people (in my judgment) do not want to continue with it.

Re-nationalisation would not be advisable as all that would happen would be the re-emergence of militant union activity, with annual strikes damaging the economy (particularly in the South East).

Perhaps the sector might benefit from some kind of co-operative ownership such as the John Lewis model?

Subsidies would still be necessary, but these are not necessarily a bad thing as the subsidies ultimately benefit private employers who would otherwise have to pay their staff more to commute to work (unless it is proposed that commuters should bear the entire cost of their transport to work, which is not a practical idea).