“What he meant is that it’s effectively been renationalised and there’s no point reprivatising it. And rather than a worst of both worlds where the state’s paying the bills and unable to fix the problems… the argument he’d be making is that in narrow bean-counting terms, you don’t need to be accounting for it in a ‘grey book’,” the source says.
“There was an instinctive cultural cringe of responding to a right-wing talking point by responding to a question by saying ‘oh, we won’t do that’. But I think it was a genuine cock-up rather than an attempt to tear up the policy.”
But does the party stand by the specific measures set out at the time Starmer took over?
The paper produced by McDonald - titled GB Rail: Labour’s Plan for a Nationally Integrated Publicly Owned Railway - comes with the caveat that it is a “proposed structure for discussion” and “may be considered as the Opposition equivalent of a White Paper presented for consultation”.
As well as a foreword by McDonald (who was re-shuffled to the employments rights brief by Starmer, before resigning in protest at the party’s reluctance to back a £15 minimum wage last year), the paper contains the contact details of his advisers Ian Taylor and Karl Hansen.
Both have now left the party’s employment, with Taylor returning to his permanent job at the consultancy Transport for Quality of Life, and Hansen now assistant editor of the left-wing quarterly Tribune. Another adviser to McDonald, former ASLEF policy chief James McGowan, is now head of public affairs for Porterbrook.
Jim McMahon, McDonald’s immediate successor in the opposition transport brief, spoke warmly of the document upon his appointment in 2020.
“We are working towards a Labour government in 2024, when we will be in a different place with the Government adopting the Williams review, and rail concessions will slightly change the landscape. But the principle is maintained, and the manifesto position has not changed,” he said in an interview with the ASLEF Journal.
“We have a clear way of getting there and an investment plan to support it. Will the policy on rail ownership get unpicked? Answer: No.”
Haigh, who took over as Shadow Transport Secretary in November 2021, has not made specific reference to McDonald’s paper, but she has repeatedly reaffirmed support for public operation.
That she did so immediately after criticism of the interventions in July from Starmer and Reeves will have probably annoyed some Starmer ultra-loyalists, but it is really no surprise - Haigh is associated with the ‘soft left’ of the party, and it is likely she was keen to draw a line in the sand before the flagship policy of her brief was diluted in the same way as Starmer’s other public ownership pledges.
Haigh also has a background in Labour’s affiliated trade unions, which have been pressing for the party to support the reversal of privatisation ever since Tony Blair declined to undo the work of his Tory predecessor John Major.
She is also a close ally of Labour deputy leader Angela Rayner, whose relationship with Starmer has (at times) been rather fraught. Rayner’s partner Sam Tarry served under Haigh as a party transport spokesman until July this year, when he was sacked by Starmer after appearing on an RMT and TSSA picket line. Tarry remains Labour MP for Ilford South, but (as of September) is facing a de-selection campaign from the Labour’s right wing, which (his allies say) is backed by the Starmer leadership.
GB Rail spans 103 pages and lays out plans for a “people’s railway” in granular detail. It is not just about ownership models - it specifies that “the next Labour Government must create a railway that looks very different to the present railway”, from improving passenger experience and a ticketing revolution to an expansion of freight and better planning. Its central thesis is integration: of track and train; of passenger services into one state-owned operator; and of rail with other modes of transport.
The reversal of passenger service privatisation would take place through “a gradual process of acquisition of franchised passenger services as they expire, or before where this would provide better value”.
GB Rail, the new ‘guiding mind’, would be run at arm’s length from the UK Government, and as such “would benefit from a two-tier board structure, with a supervisory board as well as a management board, as used in European publicly owned rail companies including Deutsche Bahn”.
On the future of the rolling stock companies (ROSCOs), GB Rail sets out the “guiding principle” of “a railway that owns its rolling stock”.
But this does not appear to amount to taking existing stock into public ownership, something which also would seem to conflict with the “fiscal rule” preventing water, energy and mail renationalisation set out by Reeves and backed by Starmer in July.
GB Rail instead advocates a “co-ordinated long-term programme of rolling stock procurement” which would “enable rolling stock assets to be specified, manufactured, deployed and maintained with maximum efficiency for the whole railway”.
As for freight, the document allows for more wriggle room. It calls for “a case-by-case review to determine the best ownership arrangements for the existing privatised rail freight operators”, which would “consider whether it would be cost-efficient to purchase all or some rail freight firms”.
Direct Rail Services, which is already state-owned through the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, would become part of GB Rail and run by a new freight business unit that would also aim to maximise freight carriage by rail. But to ensure DRS would not get preferential treatment, the document suggests establishing “Chinese walls” within the national rail company.
As well as leading the union representing the vast majority of Britain’s train drivers, ASLEF General Secretary Mick Whelan chairs Labour Unions, the organisation which facilitates the sometimes-uneasy relationship between the Opposition Party and its affiliates.
Speaking to RailReview, Whelan is confident that the principles of GB Rail remain party policy: “The Green Paper was ready to go. Andy McDonald had done it, the Tories cribbed a few bits off it like the title, but it was going to be a public service - with a public service ethos and with trade unions and others on the board.
“It’s one of the few keynote policies that hasn’t been altered by the reneging on the ten pledges or the other stuff that’s gone on, allegedly because of the pandemic.
“I think there’s also a belief that the Tories have done half the work with their getting ready for GBR. In an island this size, you can’t deliver Kyoto, you can’t deliver Paris unless you put mass freight, mass passenger - and integrated transport, not just railways - at the heart of what you’re doing.”
