Labour can’t have decided a policy on the railways – we’ve not yet debated it

Ahh the railways. After the NHS there are few topics more likely to bring up the blood pressure of a Labour Party activist. They are a part of us and our story – a story of a benevolent state acting not for a profit motive, but for the good of the people. They are also a key component in the story of how the Tories got the “share owning democracy” so very, horribly wrong.

In fact, unlike the NHS – which is rightly our favourite and best example of social solidarity in action – the privatisation of the railways is our cautionary tale. Our example of how badly things go wrong when you set up a market bound to fail both the people it serves and the system it is (badly) designed to run.

The Tory privatisation of the railways has failed. Of this there can be no doubt. The public continue to tell us how desperately fed up they are with the status quo. They need change and Labour is determined to give them change. But what change? That is the key question we have been suddenly and prematurely debating over the last week or so.

Someone, somewhere decided to brief someone, somewhere else that Labour had “made a decision” on rail policy. That decision was to let the state compete for rail franchises alongside private options as the various franchises lapsed. Unlike some, I’m not willing to dismiss this out of hand as a policy for three reasons.

The first is that Labour has the spent the past two weeks moving in a clear local list direction. This is to be greatly welcomed and shouted to the rooftops. But this nascent localism will be challenging to our oftentimes statist hearts. So when a policy area as emotive as this arises, we must fight against our old instincts and understand that sometimes there will be – even in an area as vital as national infrastructure like the railways – different solutions for different places. Here a locally owned and run cooperative; there a City deal owning and running their own railways without national interference; there apace where the state can and should step in to provide the solution.

The second is that as believers in a public option we should have more faith in it. The devil in these things is always in the detail and it will be the criteria of the competition – not the competition itself that would determine what would come forward from such a model. Done right, and judged on service to customers, price for users and quality, who amongst us doesn’t believe that a public option could not just compete with many of the current franchise holders, but beat them hands down? And if we do believe that, why are we so nervous of a model that lets us do so – openly and publicly making and winning the debate against the monolithic corporate sector?

But finally, I’m not willing to dismiss it instantly because Jon Cruddas is right – we need a debate. There are few in the Party who have done more to engender that debate that Jon and Chair of the National Policy Forum (NPF) Angela Eagle. I strongly suspect, that however they feel about the policy itself, theirs were the first two heads, in the first two sets of hands when this was first written about last week.

That this kind of non-announcement can be dribbled out with little thought to reaction or consequence so close to the forthcoming decisive NPF meeting may be the result of the disjointed relationship between policy making and the Party – with policy reviews, the NPF process and a variety of commissions all running in parallel but very separate worlds. But I know how hard Angela and Jon have worked to try to bring these worlds together and the clumsiness of this weird semi-leak can only have hurt them as they continue to try to make sure that through the Byzantine myriad of processes – from the work of the policy reviews to the submissions from members and CLPs on the fantastic Your Britain – members are key to our policy making processes.

So yes, I don’t dismiss this policy out of hand because I want to have the debate. I will be going to Milton Keynes as an NPF member to have that debate, and I expect it to be a good one. I expect it to be – as all the best Labour policy is – a debate informed and led by both our values and our understanding of practical delivery.

Labour knows what it is to be faced with the challenges of governing. We are not the “pie crust promise” party. I know that whatever policy comes out of Milton Keynes will be strengthened because it will have been tested and contested through strong and fierce debate. That is the right way to build a policy offer that is both strong and radical. That is the right way to build a policy offer that has been properly tested. That is what I will continue to fight for the Labour Party to do, and that is what I will insist we do later this month in Milton Keynes.

We will have this debate and many others. And collectively, we will come up with great policy, rooted in the Labour collective tradition, but developed with our pragmatic understanding that delivering is what counts. So no more briefing that the answers already exist. They don’t and they can’t. Because the debates have not yet been had.

Emma Burnell is Contributing Editor of LabourList