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POLLS for public ownership campaign We Own It show that more than two-thirds of Britons think we have a right to be consulted when public services are outsourced.
Half believed more services should be run by the public sector, while less than a quarter think more should be handed to the private sector.
This is hardly shocking news.
The myths promoted by the right since the 1980s — that services run for private profit are more efficient, better value for money and more responsive to users’ needs than those operated by the state — are less convincing than ever.
Privatisation was always a con-trick, a theft of public assets, even when it masqueraded as a way for working people to get a stake in services through buying shares.
It took control of resources used by everyone out of democratic hands, allowing it to be given over to shadowy corporate figures who answer to no-one — even the shareholders of major corporations have proved powerless to rein in the salaries and bonuses of the fat cats at the top of the pile.
The result has been a monumental rip-off. Gas and electricity prices soar, but energy is now delivered by privately owned companies.
That means the government can shed some crocodile tears, ask business leaders to behave responsibly and then do nothing. The same sorry rigmarole applies to water provision in England or our privatised rail and bus systems.
Services are run down, prices rise and politicians plead helplessness in the face of “the market.”
Privatisation means paying more for less for reasons a child could understand — businesses have to make profits for their shareholders while public services can invest all their income in the services themselves and have less motive to raise prices above the cost of provision.
The fact that in corporate Britain the profit-hungry privatisers are awash with taxpayer subsidies adds insult to injury.
But if everyone understands that — and overwhelming popular support for renationalising our railways, energy and water suggests they do — how on Earth are the Tory high priests of privatisation still in the running to form the next government?
A Labour victory in May should be a foregone conclusion. Instead, the party is limping along with the support of around one-third of the electorate, sometimes ahead of the Tories and sometimes behind but seemingly incapable of establishing a decisive lead.
On current indicators more people will stay at home than will vote for whichever party ends up with the keys to No 10. And responsibility for this lies with the Labour Party.
When Ed Miliband strikes out to the left, Labour support rises. We saw it when he took on Rupert Murdoch and the press barons over phone-hacking.
We saw it when he pledged to freeze energy prices and talked about capping rent rises.
We even saw it when Labour made timid steps in the direction of renationalising rail by suggesting it would allow publicly owned companies to compete for rail contracts (the Tories, so keen to promote competition in other fields, are not so convinced of private-sector superiority that they could risk that one).
No such surge in support has accompanied the defeatist claptrap from Ed Balls about freezing child benefit or sticking to Tory spending plans, which serves merely to persuade millions of citizens that austerity will continue whoever they vote for.
No wonder so many then decide not to vote at all or to vote for other parties which, whatever their merits, are in no position to defeat the Conservatives.
The consequences of a Tory victory for the NHS, for trade union rights and for the welfare state are unthinkable. That victory can still be prevented — but there is very little time left.
