Despite the adoring support from Elon Musk and Donald Trump, Javier Milei’s radical-right free-market nightmare is unravelling, and the people are beginning to score major victories against the government in the streets and in elections, reports BEN HAYES
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Labour’s rail plan leaves private profiteers still riding the gravy train
SOLOMON HUGHES explains how rolling stock companies like Angel Trains will continue milking taxpayers for billions even after renationalisation, as Canadian pension funds and Texan oil billionaires cash in on our daily commutes
A Thameslink train
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The modern railway network turns 200 this month and is currently one of the greenest forms of transport. But unless focus shifts from profits to people, Britain won’t benefit from it, argue ROX MIDDLETON, LIAM SHAW and MIRIAM GAUNTLETT
ZHANG HE highlights pressure coming from the global South for a more multilateral approach to global governance and a more equitable world order
LABOUR’S case for renationalising the railways is strong. But even after this renationalisation, all the actual trains themselves will still be privately owned. Recently published accounts for Angel Trains — one of the three companies that own our trains — show why this is a problem.
Labour’s renationalisation case is this: since Covid, passenger numbers collapsed and are only now beginning to recover. Without passengers, the train firms would have gone bust, so the Department for Transport gave the train operating companies — the firms that you buy a ticket from and run the trains, like Northern, Southern, Thameslink, or Crosscountry — new contracts.
Private train operators still run the railways, but the government collects all train fares, paying rail operators with a mix of those fares and taxpayer subsidies to make up the shortfall. That subsidy is huge, around £30 billion since 2019.
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