The Conservatives can crow all they like about the benefits of privatisation – and make whatever claims they like about tickets being more expensive, and services worse, were the railways to be brought back under public ownership. But there is little getting away from the fact that Labour’s policy of progressive renationalisation of train services by taking over franchises as they expire is hugely popular with voters.
If the Conservatives were really that wedded to capitalism they wouldn’t have bunged the rail industry £12 billion in subsidies last year
YouGov has been asking the public whether they support this policy in a monthly poll going back several years. In the latest poll, 37 per cent of people ‘strongly’ support renationalisation, 32 per cent ‘tend to support’ it – while only 2 per cent ‘strongly oppose’ it and 7 per cent ‘tend to oppose’ it. Support for renationalisation eats deeply into the Conservative core vote.
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