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> There is a middle ground that is quite common across Europe: a private company that has the government as a shareholder.

This is in fact the situation in major parts of the UK rail network now; much has been renationalised or has the DoT as sole shareholder.

The UK rail system is not now truly privately held; this has been slowly unpicked by both the previous Conservative government and the current Labour government.

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Nearly a third of Train Operating Companies are now under state ownership; LNER has been state-owned since 2018 and Northern since 2020. I don't know about LNER, but punctuality and reliability on Northern has significantly worsened since nationalisation.

Last year, we had the absurd spectacle of the Department for Transport notifying the Department for Transport that the Department for Transport had breached their contract with the Department for Transport, because the Department for Transport didn't meet the performance standards set by the Department for Transport.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cgl2j364kxzo

Truly, the writers of Yes Minister were documentarians. That line could have been straight out of the show.

The books actually have footnotes about the real incidents on which various aspects of the plots were based.

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