The Tories sold off the national grid, it’s a public listed company now. They don’t want to build infrastructure, they want to maximise shareholder value.
Privatize profits, socialize costs. That is the main reason for nationalization. Western nations would not be so much in debt if they had assets. All assets were sold during neoliberal policies and the state was stripped from income. That is not going well, is it?
Re-nationalization is the only option to have solvent states.
I hate that as well, it's anti free markets. It will always exist to some degree since infrastructure is necessary, but there has to be more accoutability. But i'm a Thatcherite in that I believe government should be as small as possible. They have no business being employers, owning property etc. Whatever they do own should be justified, and you cannot justify having a major proportion of the population and national industries and companies run by government as was the case in Britain in the 70's and early 80's.
The alternative philosophy, basically socialism and socialism adjacent ideas that all critical national infrustructure should be run by the government imho relies at it's core the idea that it's just and proper for this to be the case since the government is the collectivevoice of the people, and the government owning something is as though the citizens of the nation own it. Which is... for lack of nicer words, major copium.
Then you have the other point, which is connected with the first, that more often then not nationalized industries are terribly run. And that's by design. In some cases nationalizing something may be necessary, but that should always be veiwed as a last resort, something to be avoided.
Government should represent the people. To make it as small as possible just makes the voice of the people the smaller possible.
> They have no business being employers, owning property etc.
What is owned by the state is owned by all citizens. A state that owns nothing is a poor state that needs to borrow money and eventually default and fail.
> more often then not nationalized industries are terribly run
That is not true. Many countries have national corporations that run better and give better services that for profit ones. Look at the USA education system as an example of for-profit failing. The countries that run national corporations badly, are the countries that just plainly run badly, and are corrupt. Their private sector is no better that their public one.
The question is sometimes, were they terrible run or did they just suffer from bad investment?
Because often they got little money but also had universal service requirements.
Badly privatizing these companies made things worse, not better. Just nationalizing monopolizes is a bad idea, as well as just smashing them into 100s of pieces and leaving behind a mess (see railways).
Also those countries that did things well, see Telecoms in the Nordics, or rail in Switzerland often did it state lead.
And ironically, for example rail required more subsidies after privatization. While also losing the amazing research and forward thinking organization that was British Rail.
I would argue improving these national industries would have been far easier and more successful then privatizing them. And ironically often cheaper.