General British politics discussion thread

Will the Tories be willing to take on Reform and be the opposition? They seemed reluctant to take on Reform during the election. It won't simply be enough to be the official opposition, they will have to show that Reform cannot provide what potential Reform voters want (apart from the already bought in voters).

Are the Tories willing to fight not only the Labour party but also to fight Reform? Initial soundings since the election would suggest not.

A lot of the British Indians are very British in their ways and vote conservative

You can appreciate my comment then about the northern Ireland loyalists having more in common with them as road kill of the empire.

I wouldn't know, I'll have to take your word on that.

Labour's 40 bills mentioned at opening of parliament. Some are leftovers from Sunak or before like smoking, football regulation and English devolution so it will be interesting to see if they actually happen this time.

Personally I'm quite interested to see how the Passenger Rail Services bill and the Better Buses bill go which both aim to put trains and buses back under public and council control respectively.

I assume the buses bill will be about letting councils set up a version of TfL rather than full public which practically nobody does anymore.

British Rail was unpopular because it was underfunded. It was Also run with a British superiority mindset and money was wasted on production and R&D because they wouldn't go foreign. Privatisation also didn't fix the problems British Rail had.

There is nothing about the concept of British Rail that doesn't work. You can also leave lines private but have stricter control on quality and price caps. Also force them to adopt a cross company travel card.

I think HS2 Birmingham - North can't go ahead because the Tories didn't just cancel it but sold the land back as well.

aren’t they using the money to build an east-west route instead?

Often in UK cities the bus network is unconnected. Can make it quite confusing when you have to check various different maps and it's not always clear what type of service you are on. Very different to London where you know "I am getting on a red bus so I can use X card and it will cost y and I can hopper to any other red bus"

I’ve also heard him say (on the Jo Marler podcast, which is well worth a listen) that it is stupid that you can fly from Heathrow to Manchester cheaper than taking the train.

My experience of public transport in the UK is pretty positive, it’s just rediculously expensive. it is also noticeably worse when you get north of Birmingham as well.

I remember there were two different bus companies in Manchester requiring two separate ticketing regimes, no simple tap on tap off like with a leap card.

We did manage to buy a few discount train fairs to London but they were usually bookable only three months in advance.

The TFL model is slightly different. They own the infrastructure and appoint a contractor to run it, so currently the majority of drivers actually work for Go Ahead London. Reading own the company and the drivers (as far as I’m aware) work for the council owned company.

My point is though, if Reading can do it, what is stopping other authorities, is it actually that they can’t do it, or that they choose not to, or just do it badly.

Trouble these days is the sheer quantity of trains that get cancelled, often at short notice.

5 places have fully public buses but I can't get an answer anywhere as to why they were allowed. Franchising became legal in 2017 for metro councils I just learned but it was illegal for a council to set up a bus company like Reading somehow have which will now change.

Good read hear about the Manchester service. Sounds like it will finally be what most Europeans including ourselves would expect a transport network to bee 🤣