Railways: Simon Jack, Business editor
Renationalising actually happens from time to time anyway. The East Coast Main Line spent several years in public ownership after it was handed back to the government by National Express in 2009, before being privatised again in 2015.
It performed pretty well in public hands. It paid nearly £1bn in fees to the government and still managed to make a profit for the Treasury, while carrying more passengers and getting good passenger satisfaction scores. So there is some evidence that repeating that exercise each time a current rail franchise expires could work.
However, other pledges like freezing rail fares, extending free wi-fi, ending driver-only operated trains and improving disabled access would freeze income while increasing costs. It might be harder to replicate the relative success of the East Coast Main Line experiment with these additional pressures.
The track is already quasi-nationalised through Network Rail and the government pays subsidies to the train operating companies of more than £3bn a year.
Of all the privatisations since Mrs Thatcher's time, this is probably considered one of the least effective in financial terms for the government. The question is whether passengers' memories of British Rail are clear enough to make a comparison to their experience today.
