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The case for public ownership is unanswerable

But Labour must make sure corporations are not empowered to challenge a democratic decision to renationalise

LABOUR and the rail unions’ day of action for public ownership has put the government on the spot.

Threadbare Tory claims that our privatised railways are anything other than a national embarrassment sound especially feeble a day after the state has been forced, again, to take over the East Coast Mainline itself after early termination of the Virgin-Stagecoach franchise.

The rail firms will now avoid £2 billion of the original £3.3bn they agreed to pay to run the franchise until 2023, having turned East Coast, which returned over £1bn in profit to the taxpayer when last in public ownership before 2015, when the Tories decided to hand it back to the private sector, into a loss-maker with their usual entrepreneurial genius.

The pattern by which the public bails out private companies, restores their operations to a sound footing and then hands them back to be broken again will continue as long as the Conservatives remain in office.

Transport Secretary Chris Grayling makes that clear with his stated intention of returning the route to private hands and his equally pig-headed refusal to place conditions on Virgin or Stagecoach bidding for future franchises.

Grayling says it wouldn’t be reasonable to penalise either corporation since they have paid a “high financial and reputational price.”

But reputational damage means nothing in this case. It’s as meaningless as talking about damage to the reputations of the privatised water suppliers or providers of other outsourced state functions such as Serco or G4S.

We know the government doesn’t take into account their lousy reputations when awarding contracts, since they keep snapping them up.

And passengers who need to get from A to B have to buy a ticket that takes them from A to B at the appropriate time, which means buying from whichever firm has been awarded that route by the government. Reputation doesn’t come into the matter.

Labour’s demand that all rail services are brought back into public ownership is unanswerable.

Mobilisations that see demonstrations at stations around the country promoting this cause are exactly the kind of joined-up action between the trade unions and the party of the labour movement that will get Labour’s message across to hard-pressed commuters.

Labour under Jeremy Corbyn has taken steps towards becoming a campaigning mass movement rather than a Westminster-based political party, and this territory, on which the far smaller and less motivated Conservative Party cannot compete, is crucial to building on last year’s gains and getting into government.

Joined-up action by Labour and the unions is vital, but joined-up thinking is also key if the next Labour government is to be in the best position possible to implement its radical agenda.

That’s why calls by War on Want, Global Justice Now and others for MPs to vote tomorrow against the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (Ceta) between the EU and Canada should be heeded.

This treaty contains many of the most objectionable features of the more famous Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), including providing for corporate courts in which private firms can sue governments for pursuing policies that affect their profits. Such clauses have already been used to fight attempts to make companies clean up pollution in Germany and also to sue that state for taking a decision to phase out the use of nuclear power.

As Corbyn has indicated, our departure from the European Union should be an opportunity to challenge rules which subordinate democratic decision-making to the rights of corporations, such as the state aid and competition regulations contained in the Lisbon Treaty.

Signing up to Ceta would restrict our ability to do that, giving companies, including US companies with offices in Canada, which is most of them, another set of legal weaponry with which to attack a socialist government set on public ownership and sustainable development.

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