A historic journey took place this week in England, when the first renationalized South Western Railway (SWR) service departed from Woking for Waterloo. Yet unfortunately, passengers had to disembark at Surbiton and board a rail replacement bus due to engineering work.
The incident highlights that this is a moment of maximum vulnerability in the push for greater nationalization in the UK. SWR is the first train company to be nationalized under this Labour Party government, which has plans to renationalize nearly all services in England by 2027.
However, at the launch British Secretary of State for Transport Heidi Alexander, said she could not promise that nationalization would yield lower fares. If services do not improve and fares do not fall, critics would have their attack line ready: “We told you nationalization doesn’t work — just look at the trains.”
Illustration: Constance Chou
It is critical that public ownership is seen to deliver better value for money, lead to reinvestment to improve services and genuinely meet the transportation needs of communities across the UK. Success or failure would shape attitudes toward it for years to come. Success could build momentum for bringing other essential services under democratic control. Failure would provide ammunition for privatization advocates across every sector.
The case for change is overwhelming. Since privatization, rail fares have risen by one-fifth in real terms, while analysis by the think tank Common Wealth in 2023 found UK passengers pay five times as much per kilometer as those in France, where rail is publicly owned. Overall, privatized rail costs taxpayers ￡1 billion (US$1.35 billion) more annually than public ownership would. This is extraction, not efficiency.
Between 2006 and 2022, an estimated 65 percent of train operating company profits were paid out in dividends to shareholders, while passengers endured canceled services and eye-watering fare increases. Our railways have become engines of profit for investors and overseas state enterprises, with the Italian, French and Hong Kong governments owning major franchises alongside global asset managers such as BlackRock. Labour’s approach must address three critical challenges to ensure that nationalization delivers tangible benefits rather than disappointment.
First, the government must not stop at train operators. In 2022 and 2023, the rolling stock companies, which lease trains and carriages to operators, saw their profits treble, with more than ￡400 million paid to shareholders and profit margins rising to a whopping 41.6 percent. As the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers found, 87 percent of the UK’s rolling stock is controlled by just three companies.
Without nationalizing rolling stock companies as well, train operating companies being brought into public ownership would continue to be beholden to enormous lease payments to private companies, as we saw between 2016 and last year, when such payments rose by 78 percent in real terms (compared with staff costs, which attract much more controversy, but only rose by 11 percent). These firms are extracting enormous profits while the public sector bears the risk. Nationalization should mean bringing the entire system under democratic control, including the trains.
Second, passengers must feel real benefits quickly. Travelers boarding these trains would not initially notice any difference, because the changes that matter — reinvestment rather than extraction, service improvements over dividend payments — would take time to materialize. Meanwhile, any delays, cancelations or fare increases would be attributed to public ownership, regardless of their actual cause.
Plans for automatic refunds for late trains are a start, but change for commuters must not end there. The new public operator should freeze fares immediately and introduce simplified, integrated ticketing across the network. Revenue that previously flowed to shareholders should fund service improvements — more staff, better cleaning and extended opening hours at stations. Visible changes would build public support for broader transformations.
Third, the government cannot simply replace private managers with civil servants. This means recruiting rail professionals and devolving decision-making to regional teams, rather than centralizing everything in London. Most importantly, it means embedding passenger representation and worker participation from day one.
There are signs that Labour understands the scale of the challenge. The party has committed to establishing Great British Railways as an integrated public body, moving beyond the fragmented structure that has plagued the network since privatization. However, integration on paper is not enough. It must translate into coordinated investment, simplified passenger experience and democratic accountability. Only when the entire system operates under public control can passengers fairly judge its performance.
Labour’s rail nationalization represents more than transport policy — it is a test case for 21st-century public ownership. For this to succeed, passengers must pay less for better services, workers must have a voice in their future and communities must benefit from integrated planning rather than fragmented profit maximization.
As Common Wealth’s research has shown, the economic case for rail nationalization is clear. Now comes the harder task of making it work in practice. This requires courage to challenge vested interests, operational expertise to improve services and democratic innovation to ensure public ownership serves the public.
If nationalized operators deliver visible improvements while keeping costs under control, public support would grow and opposition critique would ring hollow. If it is business as usual with a different logo, we would have squandered a once-in-a-generation opportunity to prove that public ownership works.
The prize is enormous: affordable, reliable rail transport that serves communities rather than shareholders. The risk is equally significant: discrediting public ownership for years to come. Labour must get this right.
Sarah Nankivell is deputy director of the think tank Common Wealth.
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