We already knew that despite the proven success and huge popularity of the public operation of the East Coast mail line, the operation is to be handed back to the private sector. We knew also that regardless of public opposition, Royal Mail has been sold at a give-away price. Now we know that in fact there are to be more bargain basement sales of public assets despite more than two thirds of the population wanting to see (re)nationalisation of railway operators and power suppliers, not to mention the water industry.
The privatisation policy has failed and will continue to fail because you cannot ‘regulate’ privateers. In fact the opposite of regulation is the case. In a modern version of the days of the Spanish Main, successful privateers receive honours and safe havens now mean tax havens.
Not even a mixed industry is acceptable to this government. It is sometimes asserted by vested interests and their allies in parliament that competition from a state owned enterprise, or one that was operated by what remains of Local Government, would be unfair to the rest. But as the continued ruthless exploitation of consumers demonstrates, an effect on the rest is precisely what is needed.
The banks - the financial barrow boys who plundered the public, misled the country and dragged down the economy and who have since had exposed one shameful practice after another - are not alone. This so-called ‘industry’ is just one example of the unprincipled way in which numerous private sector outfits now operate. Effective action – not simply cosmetic – needs to be taken if the interests of ordinary people are to be brought back into the picture. Promises, half-baked gestures and procrastination by government until anger over the latest private sector failure or outrage subsides simply will not do.
‘Competition’ has come to mean competition for the extraction of huge profits by whatever means. These include orchestrated and unjustified price hikes, misusing the loyalty of long-standing customers, overcharging gullible governments and the use of complex charging schemes designed to confuse and exploit the public. Trumpeted ‘free market’ activity has become freebooting and corsair cartels have replaced public service.
Ministers in this rightist, ideologically driven government, not wanting to upset their important political donors, do as little as they think they can get away with (and then complain about ‘apathy’ and low turnouts in elections). Unmitigated ‘competition’, meaning little more these days than an economic free-for-all with endless degradation of working conditions, is well past its sell-by date.
Regulation by placemen and erstwhile associates always fails. But short of nationalisation there may be a way of making banks, fuel, power, water and other industries heed the public interest and behave with a measure of integrity and respect for the population. If each of these sectors had a publicly owned firm within it acting as an exemplar, treating people in a decent, honest and straightforward fashion rather than merely as profit fodder this would introduce a form of competition that could prove to be of some value to society as a whole. It would offer reassurance, security and fairness to ordinary people, presently suffering relentless abuse by commercial predators.
We are seeing some small and tentative steps in terms of municipal power generation and purchasing and I hope that this will not be prevented from gathering pace. And there are plenty of other opportunities such as the recreation of Municipal Banks – in so far as the Government would still allow fully-fledged Municipal Banks to operate in a meaningful way.
Once the success of these developments was demonstrated, we could then move on to other areas at a national level starting with the railways. In such ways buccaneer businesses would have to earn their booty and there could be a gradual move to substantial direct public sector involvement rather than nationalisation at a stroke and an end to the predations of the privateer sector.
