Rt Hon Jeremy Corbyn, Leader of the Labour Party, UK. Chatham House / Flickr. Some rights reserved.
My heart sank when I read the leaked Labour manifesto with its echoes of the days of beer and sandwiches at Number Ten, or singing the Red Flag in parliament during the Shipbuilding Bill.
Because however much the current economic model has broken down, and is breaking us all down, that does not justify a return to a past and almost equally dysfunctional world. Labour's commitment to recreating the great dysfunctional state monopolies of the past would do just that. Just take railway nationalisation, for example. I speak as someone who has been closely involved in the campaign against Southern Rail’s complete dysfunctionality. But the real problem there is as much the secretive and useless fist of the Department of Transport as the useless franchisee. I shudder to think what the Department would do if they were wholly in charge again.
