Isn't it odd that it's the government which says that the 4% pay offer to drivers is "fair and reasonable"? And tells the 12,000 striking ASLEF members that they should accept it, as if it is their employer and paymaster?

    However, out of the 16 train operating companies which drivers are striking against, only 11 remain in private hands - collectively represented by the so-called Rail Delivery Group of franchisees. Scotrail and Welsh railways are already "public", coming under the Scottish and Welsh governments.

    In May, a fourth private operator - TransPennine Express - was taken over by the government's Operator of Last Resort (OLR) after it had cancelled 1 in 4 of its services earlier in the year and only managed to improve to a score of 1 in 6 by April.

    And while the government's Transport Secretary, Mark Harper blames strikes for this bad performance it's obvious to everyone else that the company just gobbled up the profits (which came from government subsidies anyway!) and didn't bother to fund the service.

    A fifth takeover waits in the wings - Avanti West Coast (like Transpennine, owned by First Group) which only had its franchise extended to October 2023.

    It seems the writing is on the wall for rail privatisation. And although Harper won't admit it, his revival of the Great British Railways project amounts, at the very least to an admission of failure, even if it's a pale imitation of rail nationalisation.

    The sad joke is that the OLR train companies are hardly any better-performing than the private franchises, if cancellations are anything to go by. LNER, in government hands since the Virgin-Stagecoach franchise failed to pay what it owed to the government 5 years ago, has had even more cancellations than Northern, which was taken over by the OLR in 2020. And while Transpennine is the very worst, LNER comes 4th worst in terms of delays and cancellation.

    In other words, poor train services aren't only due to private profiteering. The government and the capitalist train operators behave exactly the same way; they cut the workforce to the bone and outsource everything, to save on costs. So while yes, workers need to demand nationalisation, the railways will only improve if they are taken over under workers' management and control.