It should not really have taken Einstein to work out that doing the same thing and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity. Nonetheless even this basic truth seems to be lost on the Conservative government and its relationship to the railways.
The lesson to be learned from the collapse of the TransPennine Express contract – the latest railway to be effectively nationalised by the government – should be all too obvious: relying on the private sector to provide an efficient, cost-effective and reliable railway was a fundamental mistake. Raw capitalism does not work in an industry that is heavily dependent on massive investment, that is a natural monopoly and provides an essential public service. The privatisation in the mid-1990s created a system of pretend capitalism, which involved the fragmentation of a coherent but complex industry into a series of interdependent companies motivated by private profit rather than public service.
