As the Labour leader faces a backlash for his praise of the former Tory prime minister, a leaked email shows he stopped Sam Tarry, then the party’s shadow minister for transport, from attacking her failed policies in 2021.
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Left-winger Mr Tarry had wanted to criticise her 1985 Transport Act, saying it “failed to deliver lower fares and better services across Greater Manchester”.
But when the comments were sent to Sir Keir’s office for approval, one of his top aides insisted the reference to Thatcher be taken out.
The leaked email said: “Can we take out the Thatcher stuff and instead criticise the current government?”
An adviser to Mr Tarry pushed back on the suggested edit and replied: “Mr Burnham’s happy with it and she’s despised in the north, so it will play well with voters.”
But Sir Keir’s aide insisted the reference be removed to “focus on the current set of elections and criticise the current set of Tories”.
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A source familiar with the exchange said it was indicative of Labour’s refusal to criticise Ms Thatcher under Sir Keir’s leadership, adding that recent praise for her was “less of a surprise and more of a confirmation of the Labour leader’s admiration for the former prime minister”.
Public transport
Come with me on a magical journey between Sydney and Melbourne. No, not via the airport… but starting at Sydney’s Central Station, aboard a newly refurbished all-sleeper night train.
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So my perfect journey is a dream – but why can’t Australians enjoy such a pleasant way to travel, given sleeper trains are going through a major resurgence in Europe, partly in response to climate change? It’s a good question, and there’s a simple answer: because the New South Wales government doesn’t want you to.
For the traveling public, the cost of rail is now almost 8 percent higher in real terms than it was in 1995, before privatization. This figure has dropped in the last two years only as inflation as risen. Until the cost-of-living crisis, when fare increases were decoupled from retail price index inflation, fares were consistently 15-20 percent higher in real terms than when the rail was publicly owned. There’s no decoupling this fact from rail privatization: the annual outflow of funds during the years of privatization could have enabled an average cut of 14 percent in fares — and if the railways were nationalized now, and the flow of funds into the private sector cut off, the money saved would fund a cut of 18 percent in fares.
Under privatization, the rail system has become a cash cow for the cloud of parasitic private interests that swarm around it — and all passengers have gained is an increasingly expensive, fractured railway, run by people fixated with cutting staff costs. It’s no surprise, then, that public opinion polls consistently show overwhelming public support for the renationalization of railways.
Most of the revenue lost in Victoria due to fare evasion comes from the career evaders, who were the smallest group of the four. These people were found to be typically wealthy and chose to evade for the challenge rather than being unable to afford the ride. Of this group, Currie said, “We’ve got this archetypal, old view that it’s a young person or a drop-out that’s doing bad stuff. No, that’s not what’s going on.”
What is going on, though, is that despite research showing the majority of fare evaders not having criminal intent, they are still being treated as though they do by the Victorian government’s authorised officers.