There could not be two more contrasting visions of Britain.
Smiling faces at Waterloo as Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander inaugurated Great British Railways and the excerpt from former Chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s memoir in the Daily Mail extolling the prospects for a future Britain built on science, technology and entrepreneurship.
Renationalising the railways, even if privatisation misfired, is a step back towards a dismal British Rail past of ancient rolling stock and wilted sandwiches.
It transfers control to a clueless Department for Transport, which must count among its failures the mess of HS2, vital airport expansion decisions and potholes.
On the trains, power is transferred to rapacious rail unions who have consistently ignored the consumer and public interest.
Investment in the railways will have to compete for resources with other Labour party favourites such as Net Zero and the cost of ending the two-child benefit cap.
Locomotives won’t stand a chance – and forget cheaper fares! The most recent inflation figures, up 3.5 per cent in April, show how government-administered prices for power, gas, water, landing fees at airports and first-class stamps only ever go in one direction.
Travelling nowhere: Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander (pictured) in front of a train with Great British Railways rebranding
Infrastructure and housing is important to Britain’s growth agenda. But scattering a few more planning officers across the country will not unleash a building revolution.
The paralysis of local government is there for all of us to see in our communities. In south-west London, the closure of Hammersmith Bridge for six years has cost untold billions of pounds to the economy in the shape of dead-weight travel time.
Housing needs are urgent, but local authority-owned property, such as the abandoned Fulham Town Hall, is nothing but a mecca for rats and garbage.
On the south coast in Brighton, a glory of Victorian architecture, the wrought iron arches of Marine Parade are a rusting, mouldering and dangerous mess.
Similar examples doubtless could can be seen across the length of the country.
Alternatively, there is the Jeremy Hunt tech vision. As Tory Chancellor, his main job was to restore stability after the Truss tantrum.
As an entrepreneur (there are none of those on Labour’s front bench), he recognised the power of Britain’s great research universities, the intellectual descendants of Alan Turing and our great bio-science, tech and AI innovators, to release extraordinary growth.
Labour is clueless about this. Among Rachel Reeves’ first acts as Chancellor (as well as axing the winter fuel allowance) was to scrap £1.3billion of tech and AI projects, including a supercomputer at Edinburgh University.
Today, the Government, without irony, announced a gateway to AI collaboration with the EU on supercomputers. At stake, some £2.5million of UK funding to be matched by the EU. This is an almost negligible amount for something so critical.
Worryingly, Dealroom’s 2025 Global Tech Ecosystem Index reveals that the enterprise value of Paris-based start-ups has overtaken London, gaining £5.8billion last year. French outfits such as Mistral AI are leading the charge.
Only last week, Britain’s most valuable fintech start-up Revolut, aiming for a New York float, revealed it had decided to locate its European hub to Paris.
Nearly a year into Labour rule and the country lacks a coherent industrial strategy and the enhanced tax and investment incentives needed to power up our AI, biopharma and tech start-ups. It represents gross neglect of talent and opportunity.
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