What difference would it make?

Propaganda misleads! There is a maxim in statistics of ‘ceteris paribus’ (‘compare like with like’), hence Project Fear’s faux pas in comparing 45 per cent of UK exports to the EU27 with the ‘insignificant’ 16 per cent of EU27 exports to the UK (Paul Courtel 12/5/17).

The EU operates two sets of export data: External (non-EU) and the mind-boggling Internal (EU28 - which relates to Britain). That 16 per cent converts by value to Britain becoming the EU’s second or third largest export destination and, as fifth largest GDP economy, Britain is a crucial EU-export market.

However, to the self-protectionist political EU Customs Union, ‘Free Trade’ is anathema for they discourage non-EU imports through hefty tariffs while EU Project Fear bully-boys threaten Brexit-Britain with intransigent ‘acquis communautaire’ conditions despite many EU-FTA/Association Agreements lacking ‘acquis’ compliance!

I chuckled at Stephen Jackson’s Labour party fantasy (19/5/17) that “public ownership brings control and accountability back to the people”. Does it heck! Unlike company shareholders, nationalised companies are accountable only to the government and indifferent MPs. We tax-payers have no say over how they are run, ‘own’ or control assets bought from our taxes.

Has anyone received their share of proceeds from the sale of Lloyds Bank (protected by Gordon Brown, then crippled and ‘nationalised’ with £20bn of our taxes)?

Apart from Royal Mail, all nationalised bodies originate in private enterprise. While on paper EU treaties ban Government monopolies, the EU encourages a nationalised core-infrastructure in the nation’s/EU’s (but not trades unions’) interest by operating them in open competition with private enterprise - hence Britain’s two-part railways.

Make no mistake, today’s not-for-profit private Network Rail and private franchised operating companies are fully regulated under Labour’s own Acts and are to all intents and purposes ‘nationalised’. So why did Labour ‘renationalise’ East Coast Rail only to return it to the regulated ‘private’ sector?

Labour’s widespread renationalisation programme will cost about £130bn (about £3,000 per ‘worker’).

We know from long experience that strikes, cancellations and charges increased in nationalised industries so, apart from ‘none’, what difference would re-nationalisation actually make?

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