“Nationalise the railways!” has been a staunch left demand ever since they were privatised by the Conservatives in 1994. In the decades since they left public hands, rail billionaires have amassed vast fortunes, wrecking the transport system in the process. Passengers pay fares that have risen nearly twice as fast as wages since 2010, for trains that are invariably overcrowded, cancelled or delayed.

In its manifesto, Labour pledged to “put passengers at the heart of the service by reforming the railways and bringing them into public ownership”. 

While other progressive pledges have vanished, the party’s promise to renationalise the rail network within this parliamentary term inches closer. Last week, Labour confirmed that in May, South Western Railway will become the first train operator to be nationalised.

There are sops to the private sector. Rolling stock companies will remain in private hands (for now). And private “open access” companies, such as Lumo, will be allowed to compete with nationalised services on individual lines. Nonetheless, under current plans, the main national rail routes will be back in public hands within five years.

While the policy might ideologically seem more Corbyn than Starmer, it doesn’t form part of a broader pro-nationalisation shift, and the government remains more than happy to defend the free market elsewhere. Nor is it being met with quite the same level of derision from the establishment media – remember Angela Rayner being asked if she would “nationalise sausages”?

All of which is evidence of just how spectacularly the privatisation project has failed. The Tories, with a deep ideological opposition to renationalisation, ended up partly enacting the policy anyway, taking four English networks including LNER and Northern back into public hands. Currently, one in four passenger journeys in the UK are run by the state.

But, despite their failings being so blatant, Britain’s private rail profiteers are busy fighting a rearguard action against nationalisation.

Thrown on the tracks.

On 28 November, the passenger railway services (public ownership) bill passed into law. The bill allows private train operators to be permanently brought back into public ownership as the contracts they hold come up for expiry, or if standards slip to such an extent that they are in breach of contract. Eventually, a new public body – Great British Railways (GBR) – will take over the running of the industry.

Under Louise Haigh, who resigned as transport secretary after a previous conviction was briefed to the media, Greater Anglia and West Midlands were likely targets for the first nationalisations, as their contracts expired on 15 September, meaning they’d be back in public hands by February. But Haigh’s replacement, Heidi Alexander, has picked South Western Railway (SWR), whose contract expires in May – delaying the project by nine months. What’s behind this more cautious approach?

It could have something to do with the serious potential for legal action from Transport UK, as reported by the Financial Times. Transport UK owns Greater Anglia, West Midlands Trains, London Northwestern Railway and East Midlands Railway, having acquired them only last year in a complex buy-out of Abellio UK.

Alexander has also been sure not to promise too much, telling the BBC that nationalisation won’t necessarily bring cheaper rail fares, but should “improve reliability and clamp down on the delays, the cancellation, the waste and the inefficiency that we’ve seen over the last 30 years.” 

Full steam ahead?

The departure of Haigh, who was seen as having a good handle on her brief and respected by the rail unions, and the possible stalling of the timeline for renationalisation, was music to the ears of the railway industry.

Dominic Booth, chair of Transport UK, wrote to the Office of Rail and Road to demand the regulator’s chief executive, John Larkinson, conduct a “formal review” of Labour’s renationalisation plans. 

Booth called for “a carefully managed transition” and added that the “transition must also have safety at its core.” 

“Hasty and ill-planned changes could compromise safety and service reliability,” he said. 

But both Labour and the regulator hit back. The Office of Rail and Road said that a safety review would be conducted, as was required whenever an operator was transferred. A government source quoted in the Times said that the public body that would take over the contracts had a “proven record of swiftly and safely bringing services into public ownership. Time and time again, passengers have been failed by fragmented privatised railways.”

Andy Bagnall, the chief executive of Rail Partners, a lobbying group for train operators, said that renationalisation was a “political rather than a practical solution” and that “simply changing who runs the trains” won’t solve the problems facing the railways.

Stopping service.

Besides supposed doubts over the safety and practicality of Labour’s plans, another approach has been to question the timetable by which operators will be renationalised.

Far from being “hasty”, the government will take control of operators as their contracts come up for expiry, rather than immediately, so that they can avoid having to pay compensation to the operating companies for terminating contracts early. This means that some of the worst performers – such as Avanti, whose contract can be broken earliest in October 2026 – will continue operating for the time being, while other better run operators are nationalised.

This caused one Liberal Democrat peer to accuse Labour of “topsy-turvy logic,” before asking: “why should a poorly performing franchise be allowed to continue while an excellent one is terminated?”

While this may sound like a common sense question, railway insiders told Novara Media that the focus on the best or worst performing operators is a red herring. It risks diluting the principle of renationalisation across the sector and could lay the groundwork for existing contracts to remain in private hands. 

Calls to go after the worst performers is a strategy of trying to persuade Labour to exempt better performing companies from renationalisation, the insiders said. 

It’s a concern shared by Labour MP Andy McDonald, who said that the point of the bill is “not simply to take over the worst franchises” but to “recognise that the private operation of the passenger rail service has delivered a poorer service for passengers in general.”

This was demonstrated by Tory MP Dr Kieran Mullan who said that Haigh’s decision not to renationalise Avanti was yet “further proof that she knows that the question of who runs the railways will not make a material difference,” with fellow Conservative Wendy Morton accusing Labour of pursuing an “arbitrary transfer of franchises to public ownership.”

Mixed signals.

The longer nationalisation is delayed, the longer the private sector has to lobby the government.

While corporate engagement campaigns tend to be conducted in secrecy, one lobbying firm took to LinkedIn to announce its meeting with the chair of the transport select committee and Labour MP Ruth Cadbury.

Hosted by WA Communications, Cadbury, and “attendees from a range of sectors” met to discuss “a heavy focus on the Great British Rail Bill and the Committee’s work to scrutinise that piece of legislation – ensuring innovation and consumer choice are protected under nationalisation.”

In October WA Communications announced that it had taken on open access operators Hull Trains and Lumo as new clients, to help demonstrate “how these services could expand as the Labour government plans reforms to the rail network.” Even as the railways are taken back into public ownership, there is still private profit to be made.