The case of steel brings the debate about nationalisation back into politics. Nationalisation conjours up the wrong image. Owen Jones nicely captures both the economic and democratic case for proper public ownership, by which we mean with a form of governance that involves all stakeholders. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/apr/15/british-steel-nationalisation-labour-keir-starmer-privatisation?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
Do read the full article it has a lot of useful links in it, two thoughts occur to me
People must be part of the process. I’m old enough to remember the good work of the Lucas Aerospace Shop Stewards [1] though Jones doesn’t mention them (it is not specifically about public ownership but it is about how different things might be if the workforce is listened to). I mention it here because we need to take notice of fundamental issues; we need a green new deal where growth means we measure human wellbeing and is sustainable [2]. Public ownership can be part of that but using the state to rescue failing businesses means the state then fails later so we feed the idea the public bad, private good which is nonsense [3]
Governance and participation go together. We have so little actual influence over the things that matter we risk a doom loop, a vicious circle; obvious abuses, but no action taken (or very slow like the interminable public enquiries), majority public opinion ignored, issues not fixed, more disenchantment, more and more lack of engagement [4]. This process fuelled Thatcherism which got a boost from the Morrisonion style of top down Labour polices Jones mentions. it was perpetuated by Blair, from there it led to the red wall and Brexit and in the US has led to Trump’s second term. Starmer is skating on very thin ice indeed.
NOTES
[1] More about Lucas Aerospace Shop Stewards here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucas_Plan it's interesting to note that Mike Coley went on to win the Right Livelihood Award for designing and promoting the theory and practice of human-centred, socially useful production. This was still on the radar in 2018 but sadly still a minority interest.
[2] There is so much stuff on this, including a really good pressure group (Green New Deal Rising) campaigning for political parties to wake up and adopt sustainable growthg policies. If you want the heavy duty academic case see
Stern N and Romani M (2023) The global growth story of the 21st century: driven by investment and innovation in green technologies and artificial intelligence. London: Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, London School of Economics and Political Science and Systemiq. Stern N and Romani M (2023)
or
Climate change and growth, Nicholas Stern and Joseph E. Stiglitz, in Industrial and Corporate Change, Volume 32, Issue 2, April 2023, Pages 277–303 https://academic.oup.com/icc/article/32/2/277/7043810
[3] See Ruchir Sharma, What went wrong with Capitalism, Alan Lane, 2024 ISBN 978-0241595763. He points out that the state props up failing companies with subsides while leaving then in private hands. I assume they leave them in private hands now because of that formulation public bad, private good. He calls these zombie companies and defines then using the measure that they cannot fund their debt for three consecutive years, he estimates that 20% of companies fall into this measure. He is not a left wing commentator - Chairman of Rockefeller International and Founder and Chief Investment Officer of Breakout Capital.
Failing companies should fail, society should retrain and help those displaced, neither happens. Instead we prop up a stagnant subsidise poor wages with in-work benefits and have an economy where large areas the private sector take a rentier approach and siphon of vast amounts of wealth, in the meantime we have food banks and persist talk of scroungers. It as if there is a folk memory of generous benefits - they are in fact really stingy.
In the end it all comes down to agency and governance. We don't have anywhere near enough agency, and we suffer from far too much poor, incompetent and unaccountable governance.
[4] I went into this for the original writing on holistioc political economy.
On governance https://brianfishhope.com/past-present-and-future/present/120-poor-governance
On limited participation and disengagement https://brianfishhope.com/past-present-and-future/present/131-limited-participation-and-disengagement
My essays on this date from 2019 and things do change. In the light of Blood Contamination, Grenfel Tower and the Post Office Scandal my examples look trivial, but maybe that is the point. It is just so deeply ingrained culturally that we don't have control over delivery of things that are ours, that it is not until there is a major failure that we see it.
On the specifics:
- The plight of leaseholders continues, we now have a white paper ('Leasehold and Commonhold Reform Bill will be published later this year setting out the legal framework') it just proposes that new builds will have to be common hold. Existing leaseholders will have to go through a process to convert, so nothing is going to happen very fast.
- The Canals and Rivers Trust is now a charity but look closely and it faces massive financial pressure (its funding has been cut), this will force it to behave commercially - not itself a problem if there is public engagement and participation. Although it now seems warm and cuddly the recruitment process gives it corporate continuty. The continuous cruising policy has long been in place and pre-dates the CRT becomming a charity. The charity now says it is campaigning for people and to get policy joined up and wants action from local and central government. It looks great but neatly sidesteps the fact that this is a problem of its own making - mooring fees are income. Fail to pay you can still have your boat (perhaps your only assest) impounded and sold - the CRT does not publish data on this and numbers may be small. The bigger difficulties are being no fixed abode and it impact on access to services. I do question if the charity model is the best way to run it, the legacy of the industrial revolution is ours - some form of public ownership with participation by stakeholders would protect against coprporate anonymity and volunteerism.