Labour should stick to the centre-ground – and advocate renationalisation

I admit that at first glance there’s a whiff of contradiction around that headline, but hear me out.

Ed Miliband’s recent Conference pledge to freeze gas and electricity bills from May 2015 to the beginning of 2017 has caused a media frenzy. According to the British press, price-fixing and government intervention are anachronistic and anti-business: the kind of 1970s state-socialism which New Labour consigned to the rubbish bin of history.

However, for the vast majority of British people it makes perfect sense not only to intervene in failing and corrupt markets, but also to take them back under state control. Polling regularly reflects this: vast majorities are in favour of renationalising the railways and the energy companies, and an overwhelming majority are against the sell-off of the Royal Mail. So why is renationalisation consistently ignored by our elected officials?

The reason, as we all know, is that the Westminster and media consensus is that of free-markets – hence the hysteria following Miliband’s measured challenge to neoliberalism.

Despite this, if we identify the centre ground of British politics by mainstream contemporary public opinion – rather than as a fixed middle point on the left-right axis – then it justifies Miliband’s fundamental argument that the centre has shifted leftwards since the heyday of New Labour. Where he is wrong, however, is that in regards to public ownership opinion is even further to the left.

Is this because, unbeknownst to the political class, swathes of the general public are rushing to meetings of Trotskyite cells and circulating well-thumbed copies of Das Kapital? Of course not – quite the opposite, in fact. We live in an age which is profoundly anti-ideology. People are more likely to think pragmatically about what is sensible and what works best.

And so the reason that most people want energy, the railways, and the Royal Mail renationalised is simply because everyday experience reveals that privatised public services don’t work. When natural monopolies like the rail companies provide poor quality yet charge ever higher fares because there is no competitive incentive to do otherwise, people quite rightly recognise that public ownership is the better system.

The foremost objection to renationalisation in these austere times will be whether we can afford it. Fortunately the next parliament provides a timely opportunity: between 2016 and 2020 nine of the existing railway franchises are set to expire, providing an affordable means of gradually taking them back and rebuilding British Rail. Furthermore, the Royal Mail is not yet sold, and the privatisation could be pre-emptively derailed if Labour pledge to simply buy it back in 2015 – who would invest in it then?

Pledging to renationalise the Royal Mail, the energy companies, and gradually reclaim the railways would be popular with both the public and the party, and fit Labour’s electoral strategy. We cannot miss this huge chance to overturn the Thatcherite consensus whilst sticking to the centre ground. All that is required is political willpower. Public ownership of public services is too good a policy for Labour to ignore.