East coast main line: rescued by the state

“The U-turn is a difficult manoeuvre to perform on rails,” said The Guardian. Yet last week, Chris Grayling managed it. The Transport Secretary, a “dogmatic free-marketeer” who is vehemently opposed to public control of the railways, did not look comfortable as he told MPS that the east coast main line would be renationalised. But he was bowing to the inevitable: the loss-making operator, Virgin Trains East Coast (run by Stagecoach and Richard Branson’s Virgin), could not meet the payments promised in its £3.3bn contract – and bailing it out would have looked like a reward for corporate failure. The London to Inverness service will return to public control on 24 June, rebranded as the London North Eastern Railway. The only question is why nationalisation didn’t happen earlier: the best service in the line’s recent history was provided under public ownership, from 2009 to 2015, when it also delivered about £1bn to the Treasury. Yet Grayling still seems “reluctant to accept that the line might be better off in public hands”: he wants it privatised again in 2020.

There’s no point denying it, said Peter Hitchens in The Mail on Sunday. “Nationalisation is the natural state of the modern railways.” They are never going to make a real profit. The “absurd” privatisation imposed in the 1990s by “silly John Major” has never worked. Such improvements as we have seen in recent years have come about only because of “enormous” government subsidies. In return, the public has been given “ghastly” services like Virgin Trains East Coast, with its “horrible matey publicity, stupid notices in the lavatories, flashy livery and incomprehensible fares”.

Fans of nationalisation conveniently forget why the railways were privatised in the first place, said The Daily Telegraph: British Rail was famously slow, dirty and inefficient. In this case, Stagecoach and Virgin got their bid wrong by overestimating the growth of passenger numbers. They have lost £200m as a result. That doesn’t mean the franchise system is failing: many of them work “perfectly well”. Well, if there are any “ardent free-market advocates” among regular users of the east coast line, “they sit in the ‘quiet coach’ these days”, said Martin Vander Weyer in The Spectator. Fares have risen 150% since the first mid-1990s privatisation, and no aspect of the service – punctuality, frequency, catering, staff politeness – has improved. The best thing Grayling could do is head to Berlin, and beg the German state rail operator Deutsche Bahn “to pick up the poisoned east coast chalice”.