After the social democratic Labour Party's election victory last autumn, new legislation on the return of the over ten companies operating trains in the United Kingdom to state ownership was passed, under the umbrella name Great British Railways.
Several of them have functioned so poorly that they have been temporarily taken over by the state, but now the first full-scale nationalization has been carried out. The company in question is South Western Railways, which has traffic primarily in the London area and other southeastern England.
The British trains were privatized in the mid-1990s, under the right-wing Prime Minister John Major. Meanwhile, the railway itself remained state-owned, managed by Network Rail.
Like in several other countries, however, privatization has been seen as a failure, and train traffic is often criticized as unreliable.
The remaining operators will be nationalized as their contracts expire, starting at the end of this year and up to and including 2027.
