WILL rail renationalisation survive Keir Starmer’s cull of commitments? Or will it be shunted into the sidings and forgotten about? 

Uncertain messaging from the top at Labour’s recent conference suggests the party is considering not taking back control of trains after all.

The 2019 manifesto promised “bringing our railways back into public ownership.” But listen to shadow transport secretary Jim McMahon’s conference speech: that isn’t what he calls for.

McMahon only really addresses the issue two-thirds of the way into his speech, and then only promises: “Public transport run for the public good, with democratic control and a strong role for our transport unions.”

That sounds like public ownership, but isn’t. Privately owned rail firms would say they run “public transport for the public good,” even if we think they are driven by private profit. 

McMahon has given himself plenty of wriggle room to switch track to rejigging regulation of private rail. The current state of wriggling in the Labour Party means if there is wriggle-room, then the squirm will probably squiggle to the right.

I caught a closer look at Labour’s distancing itself from rail renationalisation at a Labour conference fringe meeting with shadow rail minister Tan Dhesi.

The meeting was actually paid for the private rail industry, who hired the room, in the poshest conference hotel and paid for the snacks and drinks. 

Andy Bagnall of the Rail Delivery Group — lobbyists for the private rail industry — got to speak on the platform alongside Dhesi. The meeting was dominated by private industry lobbyists rather than party members.

Dhesi did actually go a bit further than McMahon, and restate Labour’s commitment to renationalsiation, but did so in a very late and uncertain way.

Dhesi only mentioned public ownership about 50 minutes into the meeting, and only then because Bagnall had just vigorously promoted privatisation.

Bangall said the “franchise model” of privatisation had “contrary to public perceptions” been very good, and for any reform what is “absolutely critical is that we now get the contractual model right to harness the private sector most effectively” because “it’s about how do you create the right environment for the private sector to thrive.”

Up until then Labour’s shadow rail minister had been happy to ignore public ownership, and instead simply say he would press the government to spend more on rail. But Bagnall spurred Dhesi to make a bit of a waffly call for public ownership. He said: “In terms of private and public there is always a fine balance to achieve. We are in favour of a publicly owned railway.”

He added: “The reason we are in favour of publicly owned railway is, erm, various reasons, for example, as much as I love the Italians, it’s nonsensical that the Italian government will in effect be running, as is proposed currently by the government, be running HS3. 

“As lovely as my friends in France or Germany and elsewhere are — I’ve a lot of love for their languages and cultures — but why are they running the majority of our rail network in order to be subsidising their networks? 

“What we need to be doing is in Great Britain, as I said, we’re the country that pioneered railways — surely we should have the acumen to actually run our own network, so those are some of the primary arguments.”

He continued: “ I know [public ownership] is popular, not just within the Labour fraternity, but also if we look within the country, whether it’s  opinion polls and so on, that’s where most people are.”

So a late and rather round-the-houses argument about public ownership.

There are two contexts here.

On the one hand, the gang around Starmer are fighting a war for control of the Labour Party and they think slashing or shaving away at big reforms promised by Jeremy Corbyn is a key to winning that battle. 

They think it will both give them control of the party, by chasing away the people who want change, and bring the party popularity. 

They think a party that promises little is more admired. Or perhaps, a party that promises little is less hated by the media bosses, so might, just, squeak into government.

According to the Mail, Blairite shadow minister Wes Streeting reportedly made this argument at Shadow Cabinet, saying: “Every day, we should drag a sacred cow of our party to the town marketplace and slaughter it until we are up to our knees in blood.’”

It’s the spirit of the simple people who keep burning virgins in a giant wicker man in the hope crops might improve.

And it is a spirit well in evidence at party conference. Starmer’s slimy insistence on abandoning nationalisation of energy firms was one such sacrifice. I think an abandonment of rail nationalisation might be coming down the tracks as well.

But there is a second context — while Labour emphasises what it is not doing, Boris Johnson is emphasising what he is doing. He wants to pose as an “activist” government, announcing public investments in transport and the environment and talking about “levelling up.” 

Because he runs the government, Johnson can actually deliver on some investment, even if it is half-hearted or half-arsed. So Labour’s leadership is trying to win an internal battle by abandoning promises, and so losing an external battle with the Tories.

The “sacred cows” Streeting wants to slaughter are not just symbolic tokens within the Labour Party. 

They are real things in the real world — so on energy, Starmer announced he was abandoning nationalisation, just as a crisis gripped the gas firms, forcing some to collapse, others to threaten customers with huge rises. On rail, incredibly, the Tories were recently forced to renationalise Southeastern because operator Govia had misled them over £25 million that the rail firm should have refunded to the government.  

This made the argument for broader nationalisation: the public is subsidising companies. If they don’t also control them through public ownership, shareholders will just siphon off the cash with little improvement in performance. 

Yet incredibly the Southeastern Rail scandal was not in Labour shadow ministers conference speeches.