Jeremy Corbyn will stand down if Labour loses next election

You can of course argue that it might not turn out to be a good investment - but it’s still an investment.
Taking the old UK Morrissonian nationalisation as a model is bizarre when you think about it though, isn’t it?
a) Because Labour is not proposing that, and
b) Because there are many more current models of state and mixed public/private ownership working so well in other countries that they run half of the UK’s own ‘privatised’ utilities anyway.
The French economy is over 55% state-owned, and over 10% is in other forms of social ownership (co-ops, etc) - and even the less-than-a-third that remains is largely organised very differently from the anglo-saxon neo-liberal ‘shareholder value’ model - yet productivity in France, including the public sector, is far higher than in the UK - the average French worker can stop around Thursday lunchtime and still have produced as much as the average Brit does by Friday afternoon!

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Even more bizarre than harking back to the 1970s, by the way, is another even more common tabloid/murdoch myth: Singapore as a model ‘free market’.
Here’s the truth: almost all the land in Singapore is owned by the state; 85% of housing is provided by a state-owned agency; 22% or output is from state-owned enterprises; etc…
Singapore is, in fact, a better example of the success of state intervention than it is for ‘free markets’!

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You just have to look at SNCF to see that state industry/businesses do not always benefit the country overall.

Re-nationalisation is not the 21st century answer to fix the issues with the UK rail network.

I remember the 70s .Power cuts , Three day weeks, dustbin strikes etc I remember we girls were allowed to wear trousers to junior school ,shock , horror when we knew there was going to be a power cut. The first time I went to London the streets looked ok but we accidentally went out of a shops back door and the rubbish was piled over our heads

Do you actually use British and French trains Tim? I have been doing so for many years - part of my environmentalism - and I have to tell you there is no comparison - I love using French railways - they are superior to the UK in absolutely every respect I can think of - trains, stations, technology, prices, punctuality, comfort, information, staff - every single aspect. Rail in the UK is just a mess - and this is a vital environmental issue now because we have to get people out of cars and aircraft.

But the fact is that the power cuts and strikes (during the brief Heath Tory government by the way) and the ‘winter of discontent’ of tabloid mythology only occupied a few weeks in a very few places in reality.
I remember the 70s very well - it was a time I left school, went through university and started work - it was a time of great hope and optimism, security, and - for goodness sake - fun!
(But you don’t need to take my word for it - British people really were happier then - see A review of ‘adjusted’ measures of economic welfare in Europe, Tim Jackson & Nat McBride
ISSN: 1464-8083, Centre for Environmental Strategy, University of Surrey).

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Re-nationalistaion may actually bring about “service” , as opposed to “dividends over service”.
This is of course, my over simplified, un-informed opinion…
I’m still awaiting a graph, on one of many recent topics…(I’d settle for a Venn diagram frankly)

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This has been fairly comprehensively debunked as, at best, a meaningless comparison given the cultural differences between the British and French (or German since the first time I saw that particular claim it was a German worker clocking off at lunchtime on Thursday) workforce, workplace and attitudes to work and life in general.

I’ll admit that my view of nationalised industries is coloured by my memories (even though a child) of 1970’s England and that Morrisonian nationalisation was probably a product of the immediate post-war era which was right for its time but was significantly past its sell by date in the 1970’s (witness the disaster that was British Leyland).

But, even though more “socialist” plans such as the RMT proposals to run a nationalised rail network sound superficially attractive I am tempted to remind the audience that such grand socialist visions are prone to not working out quite as one hoped.

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But at what cost Geof, SNCF ran up debts of 35 billion euros for which of course the taxpayer picked up the tab. As for the environmental comment I can only assume this was a joke, there is no public transport here in rural France so people have to use their cars.

Jess Phillips has announced that she will stand as a contender for the leadership if JC stands down…

Reference please! What I have seen debunked is the idea that the difference in productivity is the result of the French working harder - it isn’t. Uncomfortably for neo-liberals, the main reason seems to be
a) investment - which is of course driven by better organised labour and better employment protections: ie. the very things the Tories thought were disadvantaging UK industry! - and -
b) a better balanced economy (more manufacturing, less services - it’s easier to automate in manufacturing) Incidentally, don’t believe those stories in the tabloid/murdoch press about manufacturing declining across developed economies - it’s not true - it’s an artifact of the fact that prices have fallen faster in manufactured goods - the UK really is almost alone in trashing it’s manufacturing in real terms - another of Thatcher’s gifts.

I think I have clearer memories of the 1970s than you Paul - the trains certainly worked better, as did other public transport, public utilities, etc - but, I say again - why keep looking back when there are great models of public ownership of basic infrastructure all across Europe? All the real evidence is that it works better (for natural monopolies like infrastructure) than the privatised chaos in the UK.
But if you really believe privatisation is always better why pick on railways? - why not privatise the road system? the police? the NHS?

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Sounds a lot but only roughly equivalent to its turnover - not an uncommon situation at all in the private sector - and subsidising public transport (which by the way is better where we are in rural France than it was where we were in rural England) is a relatively good use of public money - from both a redistributive and environmental point of view (the UK spends 12 billion euros a year subsidising fossil fuels, not including the 52 billion euros the Tories lost by freezing green fuel taxes!).

I’m a big Keir Starmer fan and strongly believe that if any Labour politician can lead us out of this mess it is him. Corbyn has, in my opinion, always been a chancer and needs to demission asap - but of course he won’t as long as the weak minded ‘Momentum’ sychophants continue to stroke his ego and lick his undeserving arse.

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Agree, there are certainly other factors in play.

Another myth - at least in part.

It is true that heavy industry in particular has declined but the rot set in years before Thatcher - and some sectors (eg car makers) have boomed since we joined the EU.

In fact overall manufacturing output rose from the 1970’s to the early 2000’s, was flat to 2008 and has declined since - so you can probably blame the Tories for the decline in the last decade but not specifically Thatcher.

Did they really? I remember filthy things that rarely ran on time (and, yes, I did use trains a lot in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s).

And I’m not clear the utilities were better, especially BT

But, I agree privatisation was not always done very sensibly - while the split between network and supplier arguably worked OK for the energy market it was hopeless for rail.

You are leaning into areas where we could agree - certainly I think that your last three suggestions are best held in the national interest.

It’s harder to know whether to add water to that list - clearly Corbyn would as it is one of the industries he wishes to put back into national ownership along with energy - sometimes I wonder if this would be better but I’m not convinced.

Anything else, steel, shipyards, banks, definitely not.

But bits of industry - shipyards, car makers,

I agree, still wouldn’t vote for Labour but they would be far more credible with Kier Starmer at the helm.

I am also with @anon88169868 with regard Nationalisation - I would be concerned of the waste of money creating inefficient over-bloated organisations.

I’m with you on the over-bloated organisation but what the UK has right now can in no way be described as efficient public transport :joy: rather what we have is absolute and utterly inefficient and incredibly expensive chaos!

And still people vote for more of the same. I do find it mind boggling!

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I have said this before but must add we already have nationalisation in part just that it is other countries governments that own part of the railways.

The seventies get some flack on here but there was far lesser income inequality back then.

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Read those articles again Paul - they do not ‘comprehensively debunk’ the productivity gap - merely suggest some possible anomalies in the figures and alternative explanations - and make many of the same points I have… eg. ‘the protective nature of French employment laws that Fulchiron claims is one of the keys to a more productive workforce’.

Lots more to say but will have to come back later!

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OK, “comprehensively” was perhaps overdone :slight_smile:

The point, and I suspect we both agree, is do not draw conclusions from a single figure without understanding, thoroughly, how it is derived.

You have, I think, some rather impoverished notions of the meaning of leadership, Paul. It is not necessarily the role of leader to decide on his own analysis what direction his supporters should take, and to see to it that everyone follows his direction unquestioningly. That is not democracy, it is autocracy.

The Labour Party us a democratic institution based on egalitarianism and consultative decision-making. We are neither arse-lickers, idol-worshippers nor conscripts in an ideological war against enterprise and prosperity. We determine the policy, we charge the leader with seeing to its implementation, not the other way round.

I suggest kindly that you might benefit from one or maybe two Carter’s Little Liver Pills, as recommended by my Uncle Harold for spells of irritable liverishness. They are derived from natural sources, gently efficacious, and easy to administer, ideally on retiring. :hugs:

Uncle always had a little pot of CLLP on his night stand, I recall.

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