It is 12 years since Tony Blair did battle with the socialist dinosaurs and forced them to abandon their commitment to nationalisation with his celebrated ‘Clause 4 moment’ — the very birth of New Labour.
It is 12 years since Tony Blair did battle with the socialist dinosaurs and forced them to abandon their commitment to nationalisation with his celebrated ‘Clause 4 moment’ — the very birth of New Labour. Now that Blair has been and gone, you would struggle to find a serious politician in any party who would advocate state ownership of any industry as a 21st-century model. Indeed, the idea of the state running our utilities, airlines or railways now seems archaic and even faintly ridiculous. Under both Conservative and Labour governments we have transferred everything from telecoms to road haulage and defence research to the private sector. Yet next door to my Greater Manchester constituency there is a thriving modern plc worth
£3 billion which remains in the public sector without anyone batting an eyelid.
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