Privatisation has generally been a great sucess for British railways. The have more than twice as many passengers as they did under public management and have experienced a period of investment not seen since the golden age of rail travel (which coincidently was also when the railways were in private hands). The trains don't always run on time, but they do so more often in private hands than they did under public rule.

The East Coast Main Line was the exception where the private company failed due to being overly ambitious. The company was rightly punished by losing the franchise and the government took over as a temporary measure. The time is now right for that to end and for they system to return to the model that is working so much better than British Rail ever did across the rest of the country.

Has it fuck. Privatisation was supposed generate sufficient profit to support operation and investment, and thus end the need for the taxpayer to subsidise the railways. The cost to the taxpayer, in paying rail subsidies to the privatised rail companies is now far, far more, in real terms, that it used to cost to fund British Rail. Yet at the same time, passengers have faced sky-rocketing fares.

The only reason there has been an increase in investment is because the roads-obsessed Thatcher government deliberately starved British Rail of funds and, in one transport official's words, purposely put the rail system into a state of "managed decline". Some of the huge fare increases are now being spent on investment, it's true, but the same could have been achieved by keeping British Rail public, keeping fares stable, and putting slightly more public money into the network. Instead, public money is going into the pockets of the directors and shareholders of the franchisees.

The promise was that rail privatisation would remove from the British taxpayer the burden of having to support the railways. That promise has not been delivered on. You can't claim what's happened is "a success".

THATCHER'S BRITAIN!
THATCHER'S BRITAIN!
What did Labour do to reverse the "problems" of the Thatcherite government, when they had over a decade in power?
Other than - of course - almost collapsing the economy.

I'm not defending Labour's stance on this. They had 13 years to reverse rail privatisation and failed to do so, which is pathetic. That doesn't exonerate the Tories for privatising it in the first place though. Nor does it make it a good idea to re-privatise East Coast now. It isn't.

"What did Labour do to reverse the 'problems' of the Thatcherite government, when they had over a decade in power?"
Question I've asked myself quite often.

Guy Fawkes should have been lauded as a hero of the resistance, not burned at the stake. Burn them cronyist b*****ds.

Eh? Guy Fawkes wanted to replace Protestant rule with Catholic rule, and back in the day catholics were generally a lot worse.

New Labour's problem was they had a right wing leader and the Party was too excited to be in power to make a fuss. Now right wing leaders are generally a good thing, but when they have effectively no opposition they can get a tad over excited and slowly become one with the fruitcake. This is what happened to the poor Old Fettesian, Anthony Blair.