Opposing the sale of Royal Mail is a ‘no-brainer’

When Dennis Skinner interrupted flunkies going about their business during preparations for the Queen’s Speech with the words; ‘Royal Mail to be sold off; Queen’s head to be privatised!’ he wasn’t joking. The planned sell off is not only an outrageous planned fire-sale of assets that belong to us, the taxpayer; it is deeply unpopular amongst voters of all parties.

Dennis Skinner is too canny an operator not to know that his intervention would have been as much applauded in Surrey Heath as it is in good old Bolsover.

The Minister who has been given responsibility for the sell-off is the ultra-dry Thatcherite, Michael Fallon. He has already informed Billy Hayes, General Secretary of the Communications Workers Union, that if his members won’t accept the bribe of some shares in return for the mortgaging of their future and that of a national postal service, he will actively seek foreign buyers to asset strip this national institution. The cheek of it! For Tories like Fallon are usually the same who lecture about ‘patriotism’ and flying the flag!

Billy Hayes and the CWU know that time is short. But they also know that the public is increasingly hostile to the sell off of state assets, especially when some of them end up in the hands of state owned companies and Government Sovereign Investment funds from abroad. Hayes has said that his union will work to persuade and lobby every party, including if necessary, UKIP. He is right to do so, because this planned privatisation can and should be defeated.

Tony Blair and ‘New Labour’ always used to say that ‘ownership doesn’t matter’. They used to go on to say ‘it is what works that counts’. Even as they used to say this I could picture senior Tories and their friends in big business laughing as they prepared to go to the bank. The transfer of largely profitable state assets such as British Telecom to the private sector meant that the taxpayer lost that income – which instead went to private shareholders. As the years went on, many publically owned companies were not only privatised, such as the railways, the taxpayer was then asked to subsidise the private operators. The reward for our enforced generosity? Exorbitant price rises. Just think electricity, water and rail.

When privatised assets failed, they were swiftly taken back under public ownership – as with East Coast Mainline, now the most successfully run rail operation in Britain. Now of course the Tories plan to hand it back to their private sector friends, depriving the taxpayer of an income of £300 million a year. Let’s please not start on the nationalised banks…

At the same time that Fallon is planning to flog off Royal Mail, his Department is preparing to re-nationalise the loss making part of UK Coal. He knows that if he doesn’t the lights might well go off next winter. The privately owned UK Coal has turned to the taxpayer following the disastrous fire at Daw Mill Colliery earlier this year – which used to supply at least 5% of Britain’s national energy needs. It can only continue to operate its remaining deep and surface mines, if Daw Mill is re-nationalised, and its losses and pension requirements met by the taxpayer.

The trouble is that Britain simply cannot afford to take the same risk with the Royal Mail as we have done with our energy security. The campaign to save the Royal Mail is not only a Labour and trade union movement necessity; it is also surely a national campaign, which will draw in supporters of many parties, including Tories.

Successfully resisting the great postal fire sale could also bring be of enormous electoral dividends for Ed Miliband and Labour.

It is, as they say, a ‘no-brainer’.