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Comment by drcongo | Hacker News Reader

I hope you're right, but the current Labour Party are more right wing than the party has ever been, indeed right of the tory party of 15 to 20 years ago, and they've been purging the left since Starmer took over. I think we've missed our chance to take these things back into public ownership.

The British political system incentivises short-termism - our politicians largely see no point in implementing a policy that will benefit the entire country in 10 years time when someone else may be in charge, hence the sell-off in the first place. In an ideal world we'd have gone the same route as Norway [0], and could possibly have still done so if Corbyn had won. Now though, that ship has sailed and we've sold short-term selfish thinking to the public, have a "left" party that is almost indistinguishable from the right, and all of them are pushing populism above all else.

[0] https://www.lovemoney.com/news/85476/norway-oil-reserves-nor...

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> I hope you're right, but the current...

Can I ask why you think the government can run utilities better than a private company? (Not trolling - actually interested in other opinions). My understanding as to why trains [0], etc moved to private ownership in the past was because a lack of competition, unions, and other factors caused massive inefficiencies. Looking at the NHS right now, no matter how much money the tax payer pours into it, it simply isn't efficient enough.

Basically I remain unconvinced the government can run a utility company better than a private organisation can which has efficiency as a primary goal.

[0] Now trains seem bloody expensive to me - but were they in the 80's? Or were they subsidised by the tax payer...

Because the government actually has an incentive to run infrastructure well. It's democratically accountable if it doesnt. There is a lever there that you can push if you are unhappy.

If you run the electric grid or the last mile water pipes privately competition is essentially impossible so there's no reason for the owners not to just neglect it and milk customers dry.

With trains the really criminal part was that the land around stations got sold off for cheap to hedge funds who made a LOT of money. Japanese trains can be run at a profit despite taking losses on tickets because they didnt do this.

Looking at the NHS right now, no matter how much money the tax payer pours into it, it simply isn't efficient enough.

It's hard to compare, but there is no specific evidence that the NHS is noticeable less efficient than the healthcare system in any other developed country – so this is a weird thing to say. https://www.bmj.com/content/367/bmj.l6326

Which part do you find weird? How efficient the NHS is running is a constant talking point amongst politicians.

Trains lack competition regardless. Is someone going to build competing tracks? Can trains pass each-other in a bid for speed? Privatise and they'll bid for the operating contracts of lines and then pass that cost on to the consumer with some added cost for profit and poof expensive trains in Britain.

Also sometimes trains are subsidised by the taxpayer and that's ok. Like here in Belgium the train runs a loss tho the fares are comparatively cheap. I'm damn sure it can be optimised if some overpayed management was replaced, obvious inefficiencies worked out, the weird splitting of services required by the EU reversed, etc

But they also provide a huge societal boon despite that subsidy because we lose boatloads of money on roads like the ring around antwerp and brussels being the most congested in europe which can only get exponentially worse given how much commuting happens here.

> Trains lack competition regardless. Is someone going to build competing tracks?

In the UK, the tracks are owned by Network Rail (publicly owned) and the trains are private, who get to bid on the services.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_Rail

I know. And if they were privately owned there would be a lack of open competition just the same. Society isn't going to allow for building a bunch of competing tracks.

A private organization does not have efficiency as a primary goal, it has making profit as a primary goal. In a highly competitive market where consumers have many viable alternatives efficiency is required to be able to compete and offer the lowest prices. In quasi-monopoly situations efficiency is not required at all to make a profit since there is no alternative for consumers to switch to, and in reality private companies will generally be less efficient in this situation because they have less accountability to their customers than the government, which means they are more than happy to raise rates more and skim more money off of the top.

Private companies care about capital efficiency, not service efficiency. The two concepts are occasionally related but not always. When it comes to public utilities, however, you want a guarantee that the latter concern will win over the former, always, even if it doesn't make economic sense. It's a guarantee that the private sector just cannot give - because their priority is profit, not service levels; they are only interested in delivering the minimum amount of service that results in profits. They can end up paying dividends even when the service is failing, by cannibalizing the business if necessary. This is not acceptable for public utilities.

Things can be run just fine by public institutions; the BBC is an example of that - despite the occasional inefficiency, it has managed to deliver high-quality content to pretty much everyone over the decades, and even spearheaded new technologies (from BBC micro to iPlayer). Which, incidentally, is why Tories hate it with such a passion.

As long as there is accountability and a degree of oversight, with an engaged public, state-run enterprises can do well. The problem is that the political classes have skirted their responsibilities.

Economically left wing parties haven't been popular in the UK since Atlee. The UK public hold fairly economic left positions when polled, but that doesn't seem to ever translate into voting for left wing parties. Corbyn was deeply unpopular and much of the reason for that was he was seen as far too left wing (nationalise Greggs etc.).

There have been three elected labour leaders since 1950: Wilson, Callaghan and Blair. Wilson was the most left wing of the bunch, and most would consider him soft left at best. Blair was fairly centrist or even centre-right by historical standards and, until he destroyed his reputation with the Iraq War, was likely one of the most popular leaders Labour has ever had. I think if it wasn't for the war, he would still be held in extremely high regard.

I'm not even sure Labour is or ever has been fundamentally a socialist party. They are a trade unionist party, and the types of people in unions in the UK aren't especially socialist. Atlee was, in some ways, a deviation from the norm, in a highly unusual historical context.

The most popular prime ministers of the latter half of the 20th century are arguably Churchill and Thatcher.

>the current Labour Party are more right wing than the party has ever been

What would be the top few policy positions that make Labour right wing in your opinion?

Not sure if you're trolling or not, but it's hard to say really, given that their current stance is to just agree with tory policies and not really have any of their own. It's more the fact that any socialist policies they did have prior to Starmer have gone.

Pretty obvious what the scam is here. Starmer lied to the membership to become leader, has ruthlessly purged the left including the former leader, and now plans to sit tight doing and saying nothing, hoping the Tories self-destruct as they occasionally are want to. Meanwhile Labour will suck-up to the right-wing press in the hope that Murdoch et al will decide not to destroy them on a whim as they did the previous iteration, enough to sneak the next election. Net result, the 40% of the population who voted for a left-wing party in 2017 will have no representation for the next decade minimum. Again. Great democracy we have, brilliant stuff. Signed, extremely bitter former Labour member.

Getting a little too off topic and political for HN, but...

I think the trouble here is that the only way Labour could win is by aggressively moving towards the centre, which as you describe they are doing. Loosing Scotland to the SNP has completely cut them off at the knees.

What we really need is complete electoral reform and moving to a proportional representational system. Exactly as you describe we no longer have a simple left and right to our politics, Brexit proved that. It will be painful while the main parties shrink and smaller parties grow but I believe the outcome would be a more effective and representative government. Trouble is neither main party could push it though as it would result in them having less power, that's a hard sell.

Yes, proportional representation would be nice, and might solve some of the UK's many problems. But it isn't going to happen in my lifetime. They won, we lost, and as a result living standards are going continue to get worse for most people in this country for the foreseeable. That's really the whole story.

I've not gone back and checked the results, and done the maths, however:

I did read that each time Labour got in government, it would have occurred irrespective of the parties the Scottish MPs represented. That because the swing within England was so great as to make the Scottish votes an irrelevance (England being about 10x the population of Scotland).

Genuinely curious. I'm not very familiar with UK politics and I was always under the impression that Labour was more left wing than Lib-Dem and Conservative so I was surprised to read that description of them.

Ah, very fair question then - I think even a lot of actual UK voters have the same impression too, largely down to the whims of a few billionaires who own all the newspapers in the country and essentially get to decide who wins. As long as Labour policies are a threat to their money, they'll be presented as dangerous lefties to the public hence, as @flooow pointed out above, their current strategy of just trying not to be noticed at all.

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