As Labour's shadow transport secretary Louise Hague dominated the airwaves on the topic of nationalizing rail services and ending 30 years of private failure, shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves said: “Labour is better than Tony Blair. It will be more pro-business,” he said.
It's a strange juxtaposition that Labor today is abandoning the privatization that Blair and Gordon Brown's New Labor government maintained for 13 years, while actually saying we will be more “pro-business” than Blair. It is.
Mr Reeves declared that the next Labor government would be “the most pro-business government this country has ever seen”, surpassing the legacy of Prime Minister Tony Blair and even many Conservative governments.
But is this just another attempt to woo Conservative voters a week before local and mayoral elections, or is there substance to Reeves' words?
Since Keir Starmer was elected leader four years ago on a left-wing platform, the party has pledged to bring public ownership of water, postal services and energy (the original policy was hugely popular with the public). (even supported by a majority of the population). Conservative Party voters).
Mr Starmer's pledge to “end outsourcing in our NHS” was undermined, with Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting instead praising the expansion of the private sector in health services.
Mr Starmer reneged on his pledge to redistribute taxation, while Mr Reeves promised not to raise UK corporation tax (already the lowest in the G7) and capital gains tax.
So far it's Blairite.
But two pledges made by Mr Starmer have proved difficult to change. Public ownership of the railroads and a package of workers' rights now dubbed the “New Deal for Workers.” Both were promised by Labor leader John Smith in the early 1990s, but were rejected by Blair.
Prime Minister Reeves said he would “consult” on a package of measures that Chancellor Angela Ryner has promised to legislate into law within the first 100 days of his government, making a strong case for workers' rights – which his old friend Lord Mandelson has strongly advocated. It seems that Prime Minister Blair is being cautious. Labor government. Tensions over the policy, which I wrote about in February, remain raw and unresolved despite assurances from some in the Labor Party to the contrary.
While Labor remains committed to taking rail franchises into public ownership when they expire, it should be noted that four such franchises are already publicly run, but the actual He did not promise to get the train back.
These are owned by the Railroad Rolling Stock Company (ROSCO) and leased to franchise operators. Indeed, Porterbrook, one of the largest ROSCOs, on Thursday welcomed Labor's commitment to “leverage private capital to help deliver our long-term strategy”. In other words, the rail leasing companies that make a profit will retain some control.
This is consistent with the vision reported by Reeves. times She said her plan was for “ministers to work with business leaders to unblock public sector investment” and that she wanted to do this with renewable energy.
Blair and Brown embarked on a similar plan, the Private Finance Initiative Deal (a major expansion of the policy inherited from John Major and Ken Clarke), but since then NHS trusts and schools have been forced into ongoing It has been exhausted by huge costs and debts.
There is no need to leverage private investment in renewable energy programs such as wind and solar farms the way we did with hospital and school buildings in the '90s. Other countries also invest in and own their own wind farms. In fact, according to the think tank Commonwealth, 45 per cent of the UK's existing wind power is owned by foreign state-owned companies.
If the green transition is handed control to private investors, Labor could easily lose public buy-in for net-zero policies if the bill rises and corporate profits are boosted. That could have devastating consequences for the party's elections and environment.
Like Prime Minister Tony Blair, Labor has once again become the misty-eyed cheerleader of the financial world. Mr Reeves declared himself a “champion of a thriving financial services industry” and vowed not to reinstate caps on bank employee bonuses. In 2022, when supporting Liz Truss's Financial Markets Bill, the Labor Chancellor of the Exchequer said: 'Enabling cities to thrive is fundamental to providing the tax revenue needed to fund public services. It will be,” he said.
Like the Conservatives, it incorrectly frames good public services as a cost rather than the foundation of a strong economy. To achieve sustainable growth, we need to invest in healthcare and skills. Workers are also at risk of mistakenly believing that a company's profitability equates to improved living standards and mistakenly equating growth with company well-being.
Labor is once again, as it was under Blair, a party increasingly funded by wealthy donors and corporations hoping for a return on investment. I fear this will mean a number of scandals involving dodgy contracts and donor compensation, as we have seen under successive governments for decades.
Unlike Prime Minister Blair, Prime Minister Gordon Brown looks back on his time in office: “When industry says, 'This is good for us,' they don't listen. We have to talk about the public interest as a whole.” I paid the price for what I didn't have. Reeves should take his advice.
Andrew Fisher is former Labor Party policy director
