Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Sheilbh]

One for Tyr - a positive step:

Rail services to come under unified state control
57 minutes ago

The government has announced the biggest shake-up in the UK's railways since privatisation in the mid-1990s.

The reform plan will see the creation of a new state-owned body, Great British Railways (GBR), which will own and manage rail infrastructure.

But the private sector will still play a big role, with private operators contracted to run most trains.

And next month, flexible season tickets will be available for some people who commute two or three times a week.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the plan would "deliver a rail system the country can be proud of".

As part of the reform, the existing operator of infrastructure, Network Rail, will disappear.

GBR will also collect fare revenue, run the network and set most fares and timetables when it comes into existence in 2023.

However, many reforms will come into force before then, including the introduction of flexible season tickets, offering savings on certain routes for people who do not travel to work every day.

These will go on sale on 21 June, for use seven days later.

The carnet-style tickets will allow passengers to travel on any eight days in a 28-day period.

The plan is contained in a White Paper, based on the recommendations of a review of the industry carried out by former British Airways chief executive Keith Williams. It followed the chaotic introduction of new timetables in May 2018.

The plan was initially due to be published in autumn 2019, but was delayed by the general election and the coronavirus pandemic.

Analysis box by Dominic O'Connell, business correspondent

Since the privatisation of British Rail 25 years ago, rail reviews, reforms and reorganisations have come and gone with a steady regularity, operating to a frequency something akin to an elongated Olympic Games.

Successive administrations have felt the need to tinker with the original architecture of the system, which gave train operators a substantial degree of freedom to set fares, lease new trains and change service patterns.

Since Railtrack collapsed in 2001, however, the general direction of travel has been towards more control at the centre.

In 2004, the then transport secretary Alistair Darling considered a plan to unite the two big forces in the industry, Network Rail and the Strategic Rail Authority, into a single unit, to be called National Rail. This plan finally makes that idea concrete and reverses one of the pillars of the original privatisation, the separation of management of the track and the trains.

Great British Railways will have its say over Network Rail (the owner of the track and major stations) and will award concessions to private companies to operate services. If the plan is followed through and properly implemented, it should see an end to the squabbling over who is to blame when the trains are late, dirty or overcrowded. Everything will be the problem of a single body.

That concentration of power will also be a potential Achilles' heel. One of the successes of the privatisation was the freedom for train companies to do new things - a freedom that was a partial factor in the remarkable revival in passenger numbers in the past two decades.

If that spirit of innovation is lost - and if civil servants and politicians endlessly interfere in the working of the new authority - the railways risk sliding into stagnation. The fear among railway executives is that the Treasury, having had to pay dearly to support services during the pandemic, will seek to claw back spending, leading to cuts in services.

The White Paper is entitled the Williams-Shapps Plan for Rail, after Mr Williams and Transport Secretary Grant Shapps.

Mr Shapps said the railways had suffered from "years of fragmentation, confusion and over-complication".

He added: "It's now time to kick start reforms that give the railways solid and stable foundations for the future, unleashing the competitive, innovative and expert abilities of the private sector, and ensuring passengers come first."

Franchises axed

The publication of the plan comes eight months after the government scrapped the system of rail franchising, which had been in force since privatisation.

The move came in response to falling passenger numbers during the coronavirus pandemic, as many people stopped commuting and started working from home instead.

The government's reform plan was welcomed by the rail regulator, the Office of Rail and Road (ORR).

Its chief executive, John Larkinson, said the ORR would "continue to work closely with government and industry to facilitate reform and reshape rail for the future".

Andy Bagnall, director general of the Rail Delivery Group, which represents train operators, said the proposals could deliver "the biggest changes in a generation".

"Train operators called for a guiding mind and Great British Railways will help to bring the whole industry together," he said.

"To deliver for passengers and freight customers, it must have the independence to hold the operators of both tracks and trains to account equally. Crucially, it needs to allow operators to put their customers at the absolute forefront of decision-making," he added.

Edit: It basically sounds like a nationwide version of London Overground which is a big success. There's a state-owned body that owns the infrastructure, sets the timetables, sets the fares and can provide a single point of contact for things like buying tickets and making changes like PAYG tickets or flexible season tickets. The government take the financial risk on infrastructure/the network and railway companies will bid to provide services - as set out by this body - and meet minimum standards on punctuality/cleanliness etc (so they just have the risk of running their service).

Don't know if they'll require common branding a la London Overground, but they could do worse than bring this logo back - and paint all trains green:



Edit: It's even better - they're bringing back the British Rail logo

[Sheilbh]

Sort of related to the above story - I think there's a lot to this article. We've seen a few incidents of Treasury-brain during the pandemic, but I generally think putting the Treasury back in its box as opposed to overlord of domestic politics is a good thing:

The secret of Johnson's success lies in his break with Treasury dominance
William Davies
Gordon Brown's rule-based approach shaped Whitehall for two decades. But the Tories are forging a new politics that has little regard for prudence
Thu 20 May 2021 07.00 BST

The Conservative party's growing electoral dominance in non-metropolitan England, so starkly re-emphasised by results in the north-east, has been attributed to various causes. Brexit and the popularity of Boris Johnson both count for a great deal. But while Labour is busy telling voters how much it deserved to lose, this is only half the picture. A major part of Johnson's appeal is the way he has escaped the shadow cast by one of Britain's three most significant political figures of the past 45 years: not Margaret Thatcher or Tony Blair, but Gordon Brown.

The 1994 meeting between Blair and Brown at the Granita restaurant in Islington, north London, shortly after John Smith's death, is the founding myth of New Labour: the moment when Brown agreed to let Blair stand for the leadership, on certain conditions. In addition to Blair's much disputed commitment to serve only two terms in office should he become prime minister, there was also his promise that Brown, as chancellor, would get control over the domestic policy agenda. At least the second of these commitments was honoured, resulting in a situation where, from 1997 to 2007, the Treasury held an overwhelming dominance over the rest of Whitehall, while Brown was implicitly unsackable.

But, together with his adviser Ed Balls, Brown was also the architect of a new apparatus of economic policymaking designed for the era of globalisation. The central problem that Balls and Brown confronted was how to build the capacity for higher levels of social spending, while also retaining financial credibility in an age of far more mobile capital than any confronted by previous Labour governments. The fear was that, with financial capital able to cross borders at speed, a high-spending government might be viewed suspiciously by investors and lenders, making it harder for the state to borrow cheaply. The first part of their answer endures to this day: operational independence was handed to the Bank of England, accompanied by an inflation target. No longer could politicians seek to win elections by cutting interest rates, a move that aimed to win the trust of the markets.

On top of this, Brown also introduced a culture of almost obsessive fiscal discipline, as if the bond markets would attack the moment he showed any flexibility – the same paranoia that shaped Clintonism. His "golden rule", outlined in his first budget, stated that, over the economic cycle, the government could borrow only to invest, not for day-to-day spending. The Treasury governed the rest of Whitehall according to a strict economic rubric, demanding every spending proposal was audited according to orthodox neoclassical economics.

Balls later wrote that their thinking had been guided by an influential 1977 article, Rules Rather than Discretion, in which two economists, Finn Kydland and Edward Prescott, sought to demonstrate that policymakers will produce far better economic outcomes if they stick rigidly to certain principles and heuristics of policy, rather than seeking to intervene on a case-by-case basis. Brown's robotic persona and his mantra of "prudence" conveyed a programme that was so focused on policy as to be oblivious to more frivolous aspects of politics.

Elements of this Brownite machine remained in place during the David Cameron-George Osborne years: a chancellor acting as a kind of parallel prime minister, transforming society through force of cost-benefit analysis, only now the fiscal tide was going out rather than in. Even "Spreadsheet Phil" Hammond sustained the template as far as he could, in the face of ever-rising attacks from the Brexit extremists in his own party. The point is that, from 1997 to 2019, the government largely meant the Treasury. Those powers that are so foundational for the modern nation state – to tax, borrow and spend – were the basis on which governments asked to be judged, by voters and financial markets.

Various things have happened to weaken the Treasury's political authority over the past five years, though – significantly – none of these has yet seemed to weaken the government's credibility in the eyes of the markets. First, there was the notorious cooked Brexit forecast published in May 2016, predicting an immediate recession, half a million job losses and a house price crash, should Britain vote to leave. The referendum itself, a mass refusal to view the world in terms of macroeconomics, meant there could be no going back to a world in which politics was dominated by economists.

Consider how different things are now from in Brown's heyday. Johnson's first chancellor, Sajid Javid, lasted little more than six months in the job, resigning after one of his aides was sacked by Dominic Cummings without his knowledge. His second, Rishi Sunak, may have high political ambitions and approval ratings, but scarcely forms the kind of double-act with Johnson that Brown did with Blair, or Osborne with Cameron. Johnson's cabinet is notable for lacking any obvious next-in-line leader.

What's more interesting are the parts of Whitehall that have suddenly risen in profile under Johnson: communities and local government under Robert Jenrick, and the Department for Digital, Culture Media and Sport under Oliver Dowden. With the "levelling up" agenda of the former, (manifest in such pork barrel politics as the Towns Fund) and the "culture war" agenda of the latter (evident in attacks on the autonomy of museums), a new vision of government is emerging, one that is no longer afraid of expressing cultural favouritism or fixing deals. Balls and Brown were inspired by "rules rather than discretion"; now there's no better way to sum up Jenrick's disgraceful governmental career to date than "discretion rather than rules".

In the background, of course, are the unique fiscal and financial circumstances produced by Covid, in which all notions of prudence have been thrown out of the window. With the Bank of England buying most of the additional government bonds issued over the last 15 months (beyond the wildest imaginings of Balls and Brown), and with the cost of borrowing close to zero, the rationale for strict fiscal discipline or austerity has currently evaporated. Paradoxically, a situation in which the Treasury can find an emergency £60bn to pay the country's wages makes for a popular chancellor, but may make for a less powerful Treasury.

Amid all this, Labour is left in an unenviable position, which is in many ways deeply unfair. So long as the Tories are associated with Brexit, England and Johnson, the voters don't expect them to exercise any kind of discipline, fiscal or otherwise. Meanwhile, Labour remains associated with a Treasury worldview: technocratic, London-centric, British not English, rules not discretion. What's doubly unfair is that, thanks to the serial fictions of Osborne and the Tory press from 2010 onwards that Labour had "spent all the money", it is not even viewed as economically trustworthy. In the end, it turned out that public perceptions of financial credibility were largely shaped by political messaging and media narratives, not by adherence to self-imposed fiscal rules.

In the eyes of party members, New Labour will be for ever tarred by Blair and Iraq. In the eyes of much of the country, however, it will be tarred by some vague memory of centralised Brownite spending regimes. The fact that Labour receives so little credit for Brown's undoubted successes as a spending chancellor is due to many factors, but ultimately consists in the fact that the technocratic, Treasury view of the world was never adequately translated into a political story. Osborne simply presented himself as the inheritor of a centralised "mess" that needed cleaning up.

The recent elections demonstrated that all political momentum is now with the cities and nations of Britain: the Conservatives in leave-voting England, Andy Burnham in Manchester, the SNP in Scotland, Labour in Wales. Rather than making weak gestures towards the union jack or against London, Labour needs to think deeply about the kind of statecraft and policy style that is suited to such a moment, so as to finally leave the world of Granita and "golden rules" behind.

    William Davies is a sociologist and political economist. His latest book is This is Not Normal: The Collapse of Liberal Britain

[Josquius]

The railway stuff is positive and ticks a lot of the boxes of what I'd like to see.
But this being the tories I have to suspect its a trap. Weren't they just ridiculing Labour for wanting the same thing a year or two ago?

Unimportant point but the name is also hilariously awful.

One positive step I can't see the tories taking is devolution of rail powers to regional authorities. That's the way things need to go in large part, with a central oversight body for cross country expresses.
Integration with busses is needed too.

[Sheilbh]

The railway stuff is positive and ticks a lot of the boxes of what I'd like to see.
But this being the tories I have to suspect its a trap. Weren't they just ridiculing Labour for wanting the same thing a year or two ago?

Yeah - but as I say they are trying to colonise the entire centre ground of British politics. Plus I think Labour worry about promoting policies that the Tories would like/have proposed because they don't want to seem like hypocrites and the left would go spare. The Tories are perfectly happy supporting Labour policies because there's no equivalent to the Labour left (especially after Corbyn) and if it's popular with the country then they'll do it. I think this is a weakness for Labour.

But it's also why I never think opposition parties should suggest policies before an election - if they're unpopular they'll just get attacked for them constantly, if they're popular (and the government has any political sense) they'll get nicked

Unimportant point but the name is also hilariously awful.

As people are pointing out (train Twitter has been very excitable ), last time it went various private railway companies -> British Railways -> British Rail. So presumably we'll now go various private railway companies -> Great British Railways -> Great British Rail.

I am 90% sure the name is just so they don't call it British Rail.

Although poor Trainline is going to be fucked now because one of the big features of this is that GBR will have a website, app etc where you can order tickets for any routes across any franchises. Which rather undermines the entire purpose of Trainline

Integration with busses is needed too.

I, unironically, think the most important thing about the local elections was the re-election of Andy Burnham because he is intending to basically nationalise the buses and bring them into Transport for Greater Manchester's remit. Basically he is trying to make it the same as TfL in London, so private operators but with political control over things like timetabling, prices, introducing flat fares on the buses and tickets you can use on all types of transport etc.

I think if it works in Manchester - and I think it will - then every metro region will be implementing something similar in about 5-10 years time.

I also think if the Tories decide to go in big on levelling up and towns - then buses are an easy place to make changes that people will notice because they're far more important for towns than rail which is overwhelmingly something that is important for cross-country travel (especially given the climate issues) but mainly for commuters into cities.

[Tamas]

The railroad changes sound nice I guess but that logo is kind of funny. 

Also I know it's my own fault but I can't stomach these "bigly national" renamings. After 2010 then the first few years of pretend-governing in Hungary was about putting "National" in the name of most public institutions and otherwise regulated things. Peak of it is National Tobacconist, the name all tobacconists had to adapt when the government redistributed the tobacco market to friendly oligarchs under the guise of caring for children's health.

[Josquius]

The railway stuff is positive and ticks a lot of the boxes of what I'd like to see.
But this being the tories I have to suspect its a trap. Weren't they just ridiculing Labour for wanting the same thing a year or two ago?

Yeah - but as I say they are trying to colonise the entire centre ground of British politics. Plus I think Labour worry about promoting policies that the Tories would like/have proposed because they don't want to seem like hypocrites and the left would go spare. The Tories are perfectly happy supporting Labour policies because there's no equivalent to the Labour left (especially after Corbyn) and if it's popular with the country then they'll do it. I think this is a weakness for Labour.

But it's also why I never think opposition parties should suggest policies before an election - if they're unpopular they'll just get attacked for them constantly, if they're popular (and the government has any political sense) they'll get nicked

In the immediate best interests of the country that would work. But it wouldn't fill their other chief motive of actually getting into power, which it could be argued is worse in the long term.
Sigh politics. Its due to this mess that Blair didn't just roll back privatisation when he had the chance. His government knew it was an utter disaster but also knew it was the tories disaster to own.

As people are pointing out (train Twitter has been very excitable ), last time it went various private railway companies -> British Railways -> British Rail. So presumably we'll now go various private railway companies -> Great British Railways -> Great British Rail.

I am 90% sure the name is just so they don't call it British Rail.

Although poor Trainline is going to be fucked now because one of the big features of this is that GBR will have a website, app etc where you can order tickets for any routes across any franchises. Which rather undermines the entire purpose of Trainline

Honestly I'm surprised they're still hanging on given their markups and the many other options that don't do this.
More than buying tickets a huge positive here will hopefully be in making taking a train less of an event you have to plan long in advance and more a thing where you can turn up at the station and go (without needing a remortgage first).
I've heard so many stories of foreign visitors getting themselves trapped in Dunbar or the like when they buy a ticket to Edinburgh only to be told it isn't valid on that train and they have to be kicked off.

And train twitter?
I guess you just refer to people who frequently post about trains... But man. Train twitter. That's a world I want to see.

I, unironically, think the most important thing about the local elections was the re-election of Andy Burnham because he is intending to basically nationalise the buses and bring them into Transport for Greater Manchester's remit. Basically he is trying to make it the same as TfL in London, so private operators but with political control over things like timetabling, prices, introducing flat fares on the buses and tickets you can use on all types of transport etc.

I think if it works in Manchester - and I think it will - then every metro region will be implementing something similar in about 5-10 years time.

I also think if the Tories decide to go in big on levelling up and towns - then buses are an easy place to make changes that people will notice because they're far more important for towns than rail which is overwhelmingly something that is important for cross-country travel (especially given the climate issues) but mainly for commuters into cities.

Yes, I've been seeing a few analysis popping up that this election gone wasn't the utter disaster for Labour most of the media is painting with them sweeping the bulk of the metro mayor posts (also a few notable long standing tory councils such as Hexham flipping).
The trouble being of course that Westminster ultimately control the cities and are trying to fix the next metro mayor elections.

I do think trains can be useful to towns too. But it needs to be as part of an integrated system with busses. You take the bus from your village to the local town train station and from there get into the city. Don't properly this should be far more efficient than a winding bus that goes halfway around the world before getting to the city.

In Newcastle we particularly need this. Our metro was built specifically with integrated busses in mind only for a few years later the archbitch to take them away.
It's really fascinating to see the difference between towns that 100 years ago were comparable but today one retains good access to the city and the world beyond whilst the other doesn't.

[Sheilbh]

Also I know it's my own fault but I can't stomach these "bigly national" renamings. After 2010 then the first few years of pretend-governing in Hungary was about putting "National" in the name of most public institutions and otherwise regulated things. Peak of it is National Tobacconist, the name all tobacconists had to adapt when the government redistributed the tobacco market to friendly oligarchs under the guise of caring for children's health.

There are competing visions here. Tories = "British" or "Global" (Global Health Insurance Card, Great British Railways etc); Labour = "National" (in their last manifesto they proposed a few national bodies including a National Education Service and a National Care Service).

Yes, I've been seeing a few analysis popping up that this election gone wasn't the utter disaster for Labour most of the media is painting with them sweeping the bulk of the metro mayor posts (also a few notable long standing tory councils such as Hexham flipping).

There was a bit of a Trump/Biden thing going on too - I don't think it's the media's fault. The places that counted quickly were very bad for Labour. That set the narrative and the tone of the discussion, it also caused - frankly - a flap from the Labour Party who were panicking in public. But also both Labour factions were very, very quick to mobilise and get people on the media saying it was a big failure and Starmer's fault.

On day two and three of the count I saw Huw Edwards (with backing from John Curtice) noting that actually as results were rolling in they weren't that bad (Wales, Metro Mayors, and an estimate national vote share)  - but by that point people had an impression that it was bad for Labour. Plus Starmer had already promised big changes and was embarking on the re-shuffle. I think the Labour flap and hostile briefings by the left and centrists really reinforced the narrative and meant noone could go back and say "actually it wasn't that bad" (and from a factional perspective it doesn't help to say that).

Sigh politics. Its due to this mess that Blair didn't just roll back privatisation when he had the chance. His government knew it was an utter disaster but also knew it was the tories disaster to own.

I think Blair and Brown were both probably just opposed to re-nationalisations for political/ideological reasons, but with the railways especially I think that they probably still had the view (supported by the numbers) of the 90s privatisation that rail travel was basically in terminal decline.

Edit:

In the immediate best interests of the country that would work. But it wouldn't fill their other chief motive of actually getting into power, which it could be argued is worse in the long term.

On this I wouldn't be surprised if as someone on Twitter pointed out, the Tories end up basically saying "The Conservative Party's always been the party of national and nationalised public services, so recklessly privatised by Tony Blair"

[Josquius]

The tories have always been allied to working people.
The tories have always been at war with privatisation.

[Richard Hakluyt]

I'm going to call it British Rail 

I hope they don't bring back the curling sandwiches and pies of dubious provenance though 

[Tamas]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/may/20/great-british-railways-ministers-rail-system-train-companies

Simon Jenkins is an idiot.

He first explains that coordination and oversight over the train traffic is necessary to keep it going in modern times, then continues to wish the old 19th century regional companies were recereated all responsible for their local infrastructure.

[mongers]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/may/20/great-british-railways-ministers-rail-system-train-companies

Simon Jenkins is an idiot.

He first explains that coordination and oversight over the train traffic is necessary to keep it going in modern times, then continues to wish the old 19th century regional companies were recereated all responsible for their local infrastructure.

Brunel's Great Western would certainly get some votes, especially if they reconverted the rails to the original track gauge. 

[Sheilbh]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/may/20/great-british-railways-ministers-rail-system-train-companies

Simon Jenkins is an idiot.

He first explains that coordination and oversight over the train traffic is necessary to keep it going in modern times, then continues to wish the old 19th century regional companies were recereated all responsible for their local infrastructure.

There is no columnist I'm more comfortable assuming is always wrong than Simon Jenkins.

His "there is no housing crisis" pieces are always fun

[Syt]

[Richard Hakluyt]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/may/20/great-british-railways-ministers-rail-system-train-companies

Simon Jenkins is an idiot.

He first explains that coordination and oversight over the train traffic is necessary to keep it going in modern times, then continues to wish the old 19th century regional companies were recereated all responsible for their local infrastructure.

There is no columnist I'm more comfortable assuming is always wrong than Simon Jenkins.

His "there is no housing crisis" pieces are always fun

He is the Guardian's useful right-wing idiot 

Having said that I do enjoy his pieces, they often provide a useful exploration of paths that the country should not take.

[Josquius]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/may/20/great-british-railways-ministers-rail-system-train-companies

Simon Jenkins is an idiot.

He first explains that coordination and oversight over the train traffic is necessary to keep it going in modern times, then continues to wish the old 19th century regional companies were recereated all responsible for their local infrastructure.

Yep. This is stupid.

19th century style private railways aren't necessarily an awful thing. In many parts of Japan they still continue to exist alongside JR and do a fine job owning all their infrastructure, with incentives for improvements etc...

Based on this there's definitely a case to be made that railways in the UK should never have been nationalised. Huge disclaimers in place of differences that Japan did have JR for nationally important routes and these private companies tend to be very local aroimd major urban areas. But nonetheless its not an argument without merits.

But privatisation of the type we do have.... It's just stupid. Competition doesn't work. All that has been done is keep the costs nationalised (after privatising them failed) whilst privatising the profits.

But British Rail was so awful people say.... Which always fills me with skepticism. After the mid 20th century ideological impulse to tear up the railways and see cars as the future it was kind of inevitable the railways would decline. I really don't see how privatised railways were responsible for the upsurge in rail traffic from the 90s onwards. That's more down to broader cultural and economic changes that would have still applied with sensibly ran railways.

And no. A full privatisation with selling off all the railways would not be a solution. The 19th century system once gone isn't coming back. Selling off national Infrastructure for pennies on the pound tends not to work well and you just know it'd be bought up by those looking to make a few quick quid rather than those in it for the long term like the Japanese companies

And had the 19th century style continued I expect we would have had beeching on steroids. Very good service between major cities and within Greater London but everyone else is screwed.