Labour’s nationalisation drive has found its next victim already. Lord Khan unveiled ‘Buses for London’ this morning, a shiny new publicly owned operator – cooked up in partnership with Unite. Bit awkward for TfL..
City Hall already controls London’s buses of course. TfL sets every route and fare, while eight private operators compete for the contracts. The model works so well that Andy Burnham nicked it to build his much-lauded Bee Network in Manchester. If it ain’t broke…
So Lord Khan is now inexplicably splashing taxpayer’s cash to replace a system the Prime Minister has built his whole transport policy agenda on. All this while TfL’s bus subsidy has swollen past £1.2bn a year and the organisation carries around £14bn of debt. Probably would have been better to address that rather than come up with yet another publicly-owned operator…
Guido recounted the dire fate of recent Labour nationalisations. Khan’s ‘Buses for London’ could destroy the city’s global competitive lead on bus travel…
Bookmark this from Andy Burnham:
2029: “that’s when the next election will be.”
May 2027: “Absolutely not.”
“No election any time soon.”
“All of this speculation on an early election, I can knock that dead.”