Chris Grayling’s railway fantasy is costing the Tories

Yippee! Now I can finally take a train to Scotland without putting money into Richard Branson’s pockets. This afternoon’s announcement by Transport Secretary Chris Grayling that the franchise on the East Coast mainline is to be taken back into the government’s hands returns the railway to the position it was in between 2011 and 2015. As the unions have been only too quick to point out today, this is the third time that a private operator has come to grief on the East Coast mainline in 10 years – and there is little to suggest that things will be any different when, as Grayling says he wants to do, the line is returned to the private sector.

I am no fan of nationalised industry. I once worked for British Rail back in the days when it seemed to see its job as the managed decline of the railway system. While many admire the TGVs run by French state railway, SNCF, and the ICE run by Deutsche Bundesbahn I have travelled enough on European railways to see the other side of state-run railways.