LOOK at the meltdown on Northern Rail and most people will think somebody should be sacked for this. But what is actually happening is somebody — meaning a top, connected Tory — is getting hired.

Faced with their own failure to run trains, Arriva is hiring David Cameron’s former adviser Ameet Gill. The company hasn’t hired somebody that’s better at running trains. It’s hired somebody, a key insider, for “strategic communications.”

Arriva needs to communicate with a Tory government and persuade it that it should keep the contract despite its terrible performance. So it has hired a former Number 10 adviser.

This is the world of crony capitalism. Firms are good at winning government contracts, not at doing the job.

In May 2018, a “timetable update” resulted in a huge, unexpected cancellation of services in Lancashire, Yorkshire and beyond.

Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham told the Manchester Evening News the service was in “freefall” and, “if things don’t change very quickly, the Transport Secretary should seriously consider showing the operator the door.”

Jonathan Reynolds, MP for Stalybridge and Hythe, told the paper:
“Let’s be honest, this level of incompetence should see heads roll in both government and Northern Rail.” 

But people are being shown in the door, not out of it. Heads are being appointed, instead of rolling.

In July, the Advisory Committee of Business Appointments (Acoba), which is supposed to police the “revolving door” between government and industry, announced that Hanbury Strategy, a lobbying company, was now offering “strategic communications advice” to Arriva, for an initial six months starting in May.

Hanbury was founded and is run by Ameet Gill, who was David Cameron’s “director of strategy” until July 2016.

Because he is ex-Number 10, his clients are monitored by Acoba. Gill founded Hanbury with Paul Stephenson, another former Tory special adviser. 

Stephenson has a history of working with disasters. He was special adviser to former health secretary Andrew Lansley when he imposed his privatisation “reforms.”

Stephenson went on to work for the British Bankers Association and then became communications director for Vote Leave before joining Hanbury.

In a 2010 speech on “corporate lobbying” Cameron said the revolving door politics and corporations, with “ex-advisers for hire, helping big business find the right way to get its way” was “crony capitalism.” 

This was seen as a condemnation of cronyism, but Cameron’s former advisers seem to have taken it as career advice.

Arriva relies on buying access and influence rather than doing a good job, because that is how government contracting works. 

Hanbury is Arriva’s second “public affairs” company. The company won the Northern Rail franchise with the help of MHP Communications.

MHP boasts it got the favourable media coverage that helped Arriva win the franchise. As we can now see, any favourable coverage was undeserved.

MHP is also politically connected. It has former Tory people on board, like Lisa Hunter, a former special adviser to Iain Duncan Smith and Jeremy Hunt .

MHP also has strong LibDem links. Its joint head of public affairs, James Gurling, is a “senior figure within the Liberal Democrat party and has run several election campaigns on their behalf.” He chaired the LibDems 2017 general election campaign.