Heading for buffers

NATIONALISATION of the railway was supposed to spark the renaissance of a critical service – but the reality is starkly different.

The dead hand of the disaster-prone SNP has led to utter chaos within weeks of direct control of ScotRail passing to the Scottish Government. Cancellations are rife and train services are facing the biggest cuts in decades in the midst of a rapidly deepening pay and recruitment crisis.

The rebooting of the Covid-battered economy must be the overriding priority – but that cannot happen without an efficient railway running enough trains to meet demand. If the disruption continues, the SNP’s much-vaunted net zero ambitions will be left in tatters as commuters opt for cars over expensive and unreliable trains – the bleakest of ironies, given that the Nationalists are in partnership with the Green Party.

If union predictions of cuts of up to a third in the number of services are correct, it will be a massive blow for the rail system – one from which it may never recover.

And most unforgivably, it would be a scandalous dereliction of duty by a government which has failed to live up to its grand promises of a revitalised rail service fit for the 21st century.