We all know, sadly the only ideas that will come from the Labour party are revamped left wing polices that the electorate have rejected time and time again.
Re-nationalizing the railways was pure self interest from the rail union, if labour was serious surely they should have started with Water, electricity and gas.
Esential services that pensioners need to survive.
What ideas would you expect left wing party to come out with if it is not based on left wing ideology.
There is an ideological difference between the Tories and Labour, it is what should be the size of the state.
The Tories believe the state intrudes on people lives and makes them less free, Labour believes the state can enhance freedom. The Tories therefore think that the state should do a bare minimum and everything possible is to be subject to market forces as that is the only way equilibrium can be achieved. Labour believes that the state can be used to achieve equilibrium by regulation of the market and state control of vital services and industry. Under Labour the state is used to try to achieve equality, under the Tories, the free market gives the opportunity to achieve equality.
Left wing ideas are very popular, the last Labour manifesto was far more popular than the Party itself, the problem is many left wing idea's are now taken for granted and people no longer associate them with the left. By that I mean things like universal free education, the NHS, the welfare state. Every single day of your life you will come across something that is by nature left wing or more accurately Statist. If you walk out of your front door you are confronted by the state, the roads, the street lights, the traffic lights, the schools, the hospitals these are all part of the state.
Is it feasible to have a country without a state, where you are free and everything is subject to the market. Lets think about it. When you leave your front door, will a private company pay for the street lights and then charge you for using them, will a private company run the traffic lights and charge you for using them. How many private roads are there in the country. One toll road that you have to pay to use and some toll bridges that you have to pay to use. Imagine now paying a private company for everything. If you walk past a street light and it turns off leaving you in the dark, will you put £1 in the meter. If you are charged for every mile you drive how much will that cost you? The state though needs infrastructure so that business can move goods to market. No business will build its own road to market, because if one business did, every business would have too and the nation would be tarmac.
Railways, do not lend themselves to the market, you cannot have trains overtaking each other to get to a destination so they can only compete on service or on price. As business is answerable to shareholders they pursue profit, so they either raise fares or pare down service, so they can eke out as much profit as possible. If the railway was run by the state as a normal part of state infrastructure without the need to pursue profit, fares could in theory be free, services would not have to be profitable, because there are no shareholders and the railways once again revert back to the same infrastructure status as roads. Necessary for the state and for business to get goods and consumers to the market. Without state infrastructure if business A wanted to move goods to Market B then it would have to build its own infrastructure. So if I wanted some crisps from the Spar i would build my own railway whist the suppliers of the crisps to the spare would also build their own railway from their factory to the Spar.
The last bit is why we have a state, it enables everyone from worker to owner to consumer to move to purchase goods necessary to live, the schools educate people so they can work and the hospitals make the sick better so they can work, because if you left that all to the private sector then its possible they would educate you enough to press the button on a machine, if you got sick you died because they care only about profit. Now there are capitalists who would be very happy if that was the case, because you are just a unit of production to them and as important as the company cat.
Therefore the state should provide essential services , it already provides essential services such as the Police, the Army, roads and a myriad of other things you do not consider so why are the Railways any different?
