Poll shows that pledging to nationalise the railways could prove to be electorally effective

For the research, Survation looked specifically at 4 key marginal seats – Crawley, Stevenage, Reading West and Milton Keynes South – that are currently Conservative-held but Labour need to win a majority next May. They found that once the ‘don’t knows’ had been removed, 74% of people asked didn’t think their rail service would be worse run in public hands. Meanwhile, 71% of respondents thought fare prices would be either the same or cheaper than now and half of all respondents thought fares would be cheaper under public ownership.

In a similar vein, 60% of all respondents said they wanted own local operator to be brought back under public ownership at the next opportunity. Perhaps unsurprisingly of these people, 93% wanted publicly-owned rail rolled out across the country. And even those who wanted their own service to remain run by private companies over a third didn’t think that this should apply to all of  the UK’s railway. 

So it looks like public support for nationalisation of the railways continues to remain high. The Labour leadership should take heed; pledging to push through such a policy could play a part in securing a majority next May…