Blain’s Morning Porridge 26th April 2024: UK Railways; Fixing Broken Britain one Sleeper at a Time!

“Fascist states brag about making the trains run on time, yet the test of good government should be the excellence and reliability of the railway.” 

For the past 14 years UK Railways have been in decline – more costly, less reliable, more fraught. They are evidence of Broken Britain. The Labour Party has announced plans that amount to re-Nationalisation. They are prudent, sound and address the problems of failed railway privatisation in a reasonable manner… Can they do the same with the whole broken economy?

Before launching into this morning’s rant…. Let me tell a story…

A few years ago Covid revealed how severely dilapidated and in need of restoration our home was. She-who-is-Mrs Blain and I decided to fix it. We fought for planning and had to make compromises. It was an expensive exercise – “unfunded” as the OBR might have said. We ran-over-budget and made plenty of foolish mistakes along the way, but we approached it with a sense of mission, excitement, clear goals in mind and determined to work with our builders and neighbours – other stakeholders in the project – to make it good.

We might have emptied our rainy-day savings-pot and are more highly geared than we’d hoped to be at our age, but we’re inordinately happy in our now fabulous home by the sea… Earlier this week our builders were in doing regular maintenance on the decks, windows and gutters, and it was almost a party atmosphere over innumerable cups of tea and biscuits as they played with Dinner-Jacket, our puppy-dog. Our neighbours are happy – our house looks great and has helped lift prices in our street.

Somewhere in that story is a lesson.

Back in the Smoke…

I have no great expectations Broken Britain will be as comprehensively fixed following the coming election… but yesterday the Labour Party raised my hopes in their first policy and plans announcement. They are going to fix the Railways. 

Back in 2020, soon after the last election, I wrote a furious open letter to my Conservative MP (whom I voted for) about the miserable state of the Railways: A letter to Paul Holmes MP about the railways.

Regular readers will know I am not a happy railway user – for the last 15 years I have fulminated many times at the injustices of how the once excellent South-Western Rail service from Southampton to Waterloo in London has deteriorated into a complete sh*t-show. Journey-times are longer, trains are impossibly busy, while the fares have risen twice as fast as wages since 2010 – when the current Government was first elected. It costs me £20 just to park at the station for the day! 2-years of strikes means it’s a complete lottery if trains operate.

Working from home is a boon. Yet, couple of times a week I still clamber on to the train, and scribble out the Morning Porridge on the way up to town. I am acutely aware I’m at risk. Because the train operating companies are not incentivised to work with, or even communicate with the railway owner and maintenance firm, NetWork Rail, the whole system can shut at any point because of multiple single point failures. It’s always someone elses fault when it goes wrong. The train unions (rightly or wrongly) have been striking for 2 years – yet the government transport minister is doing nothing to solve the crisis, and hasn’t sat down with the unions to discuss their grievances for 18 months!

Yesterday I was unable to write the Porridge on the train…. It arrived on time, but was 2 carriages shorter than usual – therefore 20% more packed. Also, it was in local commuter train format – ie narrow seating and no tables or seat backs for commuters to work their laptops form. I tried to work, with laptop balanced on knee but soon found RSI developing in my wrist. I should be suing my employer for the bad ergonomics – but since that’s me.. maybe not.

Myself and another commuter asked the guard what was going on… and that’s when it got a bit 1984. The guard explained the Train Operators logic: Southwest trains introduced shorter 9 carriage trains earlier this year. Yes, they were busier and less comfortable, but after the initial complaints.. commuters were deemed to have accepted them.

On the trains no one cares if you scream!

South Western Trains (owned by First Group and Hong Kong’s public MTR  train operator!)  have moved to the next stage, pretty certain no one will hold them to accountable for making the service even worse. They will replace the old inter-city trains with cheaper to run, smaller local commuter trains. It’s a deliberate policy to degrade the service. The railway management has been warned by the guards there will be furious complaints, but First Group expect we, the sheeple, will simply accept it and protests will die down over the summer. One-and-a-half hours up to London on a cattle truck will be a deal killer for me. It’s going to be cheaper and quicker to drive.

Changing to smaller trains makes little difference to the operating companies except in terms of margin – it’s a simple arbitrage: they will be paid the same amount of subsidy by Govt for running them. Much the same way other privatised national infrastructure has failed to deliver.

A smaller, slower, less comfortable train will make an enormous difference to commuters like myself. It means 3 hours (previously 2) of the day will be spent out of touch and useless (because the internet service is non-functional.) Our lives will become more difficult and upsetting, and we’ll probably face an above inflation fare increase later this year. Sure, I could read a book – but I want to spend my home time with my wife, my dog, at my art class, or racing my dinghy – not doing work stuff, like writing the porridge!

Complaints usually fall on deaf ears because the enshitification of everything in Broken Britain over the last 14 years – Water, Potholes, Schools, Defence, and Health Services – and the rest.

No one listens to lowly rail consumers. Conservative MPs don’t use trains. For 14 years the railways have been far down their list of priorities – well below such important national concerns as the absolutely unworkable plan to send refugees to Rwanda, screwing up the Brexit deal, or facilitating disappointments like Teresa May, Boris, Lis Truss and the soon to be Californian Rishi Sunak.

But maybe things might get better…

Yesterday, the Labour party, the UK’s govt in waiting, announced a new plan for the railways. The Tories immediately dismissed it as unfunded.  But the fact is: Labour have produced a plan and a policy – something the Tories have been utterly disinterested in producing. More to the point – it’s pretty much the same plan the Tories were advised to adopt by their own rail advisors in 2018!

It was the first proper policy and plans we’ve heard from any political party to address Broken Britain. Labour’s plan might not be perfect, but it’s the first tangible sign a political party in the UK is actually thinking about the issues. And that is a good thing.

Labour shows signs of actually thinking through the basic issues:

1. They have thought about the problem: why are services so poor, unreliable and too expensive?
2. What is the economic benefit of an effective rail network?
3. Identified the reasons the privatised rail infrastructure and railway operating companies have failed – because the rail operating companies are not incentivised to improve or deliver, and don’t work with NetWork Rail – the track operations company.
4. All UK trains are owned by highly profitable Train leasing companies. They don’t intend to change that – if it works, it works, but they have noted that UK rail manufacturers are closing down because of the not-joined up ad-hoc approach to rolling-stock renewal by the franchise holders.
5. Labour have come up with a solution – which they haven’t called nationalisation, but will result in the creation of Great British Rail as the rail company franchises expire during their first term in office. The result will be one company to run trains and track to deliver their promised improvements to users. It will save money – about £2 bln per annum.

A victory for common sense? The Torygraph (journal of the Conservative Party) immediately claimed it will cost the nation £3 bln per annum in train leasing payments to the rolling stock owners – but, that’s what the current rail operating companies already pay, so its not a new cost.

The reaction from the Great British Public has been – underwhelming. Voters have lost confidence in politics because of Broken Britain. There is a broad assumption nothing can be fixed. I listened to one chap on the Radio say the current private rail company system is terrible, but Government is bound to be worse… which is a fair conclusion if you’ve been watching the last 14 years of utter political incompetence.

If there is one thing we do know.. when you reach the bottom the only way is up. I, for one, will enthusiastically vote for better managed, better costed and more efficient railways, and hope Labour will be as pragmatic on the rest of the economy. It will no doubt take years to repair Broken Britain, but at least Labour are making plans to do so..

What are the Tories doing…? Oh, succession planning. Rumour from Westminster is Rishi will be off soon after the party is gutted in next week’s local elections..

Bill Blain

Author of the Morning Porridge

Wind Shift Capital

www.windshift.capital