“One important point about rail privatisation, and it applies to electricity and water also, is that it’s almost impossible to identify any real operational savings against state management, since transaction costs, profit-taking and other rent-seeking are all so costly. If neoliberals in policy circles really cared about value for money, they’d renationalise or seek some other model. But the motivations have always been a) accounting (get the railways off the Treasury’s books) and b) ideological (markets and private ownership must be better, even quasi-markets and quasi-private management). And so the appearances of privatisation and market making have to be preserved.”