HOLMES FIT FOR BREXIT Labour on right track

Govt see sense in running bad east rail line

THERE are lovely parts of the East Coast main line.

The finest bit is after you leave Newcastle – no disrespect to that fine city – when the track winds through Northumberland and takes in the best of that beautiful coast.

It was rightly voted Britain’s most scenic rail route, passing through an area of outstanding natural beauty, whizzing by Lindisfarne, crossing the Scottish border at Berwick.

I’ve done the journey a few times. It’s great when it goes well. But very often it doesn’t.

Gritted

And when you’ve paid a couple of hundred quid and can’t get a seat on a train that inexplicably breaks down, has no food or drink and broken toilets, it is not pleasant.

We know railways are expensive – fares have risen 32 per cent since 2010, at a rate three times higher than average wages.

Across the network, an estimated minimum of £725million a year flows from the railway to shareholders.

Lots goes abroad, with the Germans, French, Dutch all owning big slices. So the decision to take the East Coast line back into public ownership is good.

Virgin and Stagecoach were due to run the line – from King’s Cross to Edinburgh – until 2023.

Now it will be run by the Government, for the moment at least.

It’s a choice Transport Secretary Chris Grayling (right) UNDERWHELMING news of the week, Benedict Cumberbatch will play Dominic Cummings in a film about Brexit.

The Benedict Cumberbatch bit is fine. The bloke is, after all, the fourth-best actor to play Sherlock Holmes. But Dominic will have taken through gritted teeth. It’s an admission Labour’s manifesto promise to renationalise the network is the way forward. Renationalisation is one of the party’s most popular policies – backed by 60 per cent of people. And the East Coast line is just the start. Because there are more problems, ahem, coming down the track. The number of people using Britain’s railways is in decline. In the past two quarters usage has decreased,

AFTER Prime Minister’s Questions every week, party spokesmen take questions from journalists.

They can range from what just happened in the chamber, to the issues of the week, to more arcane matters.

This time round, Labour’s spokesman was asked if archrepublican Jeremy Corbyn would be watching the royal wedding... After a pause he answered: “Well there’s catchup, isn’t there?” Cummings? He was a backroom figure in the Brexit campaign. Wow, could there be anything more thrilling.

But what about the rest of the cast? I asked a bloke who used to hang around with Nigel Farage who’d play the former driven by falls in season ticket journeys. That means other franchises are under threat because their projections don’t add up.

The four watching most nervously are Northern, Transpennine, Greater Anglia and South Western.

Experts say the reason passengers are turning their backs on rail is simple – they have been priced off trains.

One expert told me: “It is a pretty straightforward choice people are making. Commuters are being hit most.

“You could drive yourself to work, Ukip leader. “Nigel would want to play himself. Failing that, Mel Gibson or Brad Pitt. Or maybe the meerkat off the adverts. Lots of people say they look alike.”

There you go. A Brexit drama starring Aleksandr the meerkat. That, to be fair, I’d pay to see. maybe sit in a bit of traffic, pay for petrol, parking or whatever.

“Or you could pay thousands a year for an overcrowded service that is – at best – unreliable.

“Passengers are looking at it and taking the frankly obvious decision.

“The system is being propped up for political reasons. It’s time to let it go.”

Fat controllers across the country are looking at the East Coast shambles and worrying. More worried are the Tories because Labour’s pledge looks increasingly the right thing to do. CONGRATULATIONS (again) to MP Carolyn Harris for winning the fight to lower the top stakes on fixed-odds betting machines to £2. This win comes just weeks after her victory on scrapping child burial fees. We’re proud to have teamed up with her in these campaigns and look forward to working

with her again (after a little bit of a holiday...).