Starmer shunts back and forth on Labour pledge to nationalise rail

LABOUR was in policy disarray last night after Sir Keir Starmer appeared to drop his pledge to nationalise the railways – before performing a U-turn hours later.

Yesterday morning Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves said renationalisation was no longer compatible with Labour’s ‘fiscal rules’.

Speaking in Liverpool later, Sir Keir backed his frontbencher, saying he would reject an ‘ideological’ position and instead take a ‘pragmatic’ approach to the issue.

But he was forced to clarify his position last night, saying that Labour would stick with the pledge he ran for the party leadership on to nationalise the railways in government.

He said: ‘On the specifics of nationalisation, I’m pragmatic, not ideological. I don’t think that after the pandemic an ideological response is the right one.

‘Rail is probably different from the others because so much of our rail is already in public ownership. That is what I mean about not being ideological about it.’

earlier, Miss Reeves had said that ‘spending billions of pounds on nationalising things’ does not fit within Labour’s fiscal guidelines.

She also said nationalisation was a ‘commitment in a manifesto that secured our worst result since 1935 [in the 2019 general election]’ – one that has now been ‘scrapped’.

When questioned afterwards about his view on the public ownership of rail, Sir Keir said:

‘Whether it comes to rail or anything else, I want to be pragmatic about this rather than ideological.’

This appeared to spark a row within the Labour front bench, with transport spokesman Louise Haigh saying: ‘Labour is committed to public ownership of rail and putting the public back in control of our bus network to drive down prices, improve services and meet net zero.’ Labour’s junior transport minister Sam Tarry insisted that the party’s position that rail networks would be renationalised was ‘100 per cent crystal clear’.