Labour MPs have hauled the bosses of the rail operator c2c to Parliament to explain the delays that have been ruining the mornings of commuters over the past year. The ironic thing is that c2c has been run by… the Labour Government since July 2025. So Labour MPs have a hand in these failures…
Before the takeover, 94% of c2c trains arrived within five minutes of schedule; as of August 2026, that figure has now slumped to under 71.5%, post-nationalisation. Cancellations also peaked at 4.7% this August, while average passenger lateness has since hit the worst levels since records began in 2010. The Government blames the weather, the weather also existed under private operators…
A running theme seems to be emerging across nationalised services. Office of Rail and Road figures show Greater Anglia, West Midlands Trains, and South Western Railway are all running later than before nationalisation, while state-run GTR cancelled more than 5% of its services over the summer. Labour backbencher Terry Jermy is now complaining about Great Northern too. Even Labour MPs seem to be clocking onto the woes of nationalisation…
Lucy Powell told Sky News that the Ed Miliband-Russell Brand interview happened in part because the ‘social media age’ had not begun by 2015:
“Look, I mean, he approached the Labour Party, he approached the campaign team, and we’re in very different times now. We weren’t in the social media age at the time – where you could maybe search things up and see allegations about somebody at the time. and as I say, if there was any suggestion at all, we were dealing with someone who was a known sexual predator at the time, then, of course, you know, no one would have done that. But as I say, he was a well known public figure. Lots of people from Hollywood to the BBC to many others gave this person a very, very powerful platform. And we didn’t know at the time, unfortunately. It was a different era.”