Labour’s plan for Great British Railways is spot on. The track had to be nationalised by the Blair govt after the private company collapsed. The same now happening to train operators whose costs/profits are excessive with plummeting service standards. Time to put passengers first
Andrew Adonis
23.2K posts
My Prospect newsletter prospectmagazine.co.uk/politics/sign-…. Latest 📖 ‘Ernest Bevin: Labour’s Churchill’
Born February 1
Joined November 2011
- Andrew Adonis repostedThe government has failed renters—and homeowners, writes @Andrew_Adonis "The UK has nearly 10m fewer homes than France, for a population not much smaller, and we are building new homes at only about half the rate of the French."
- Andrew Adonis repostedThere’s nothing illegal or surreptitious about the immigration surge since Brexit, writes @Andrew_Adonis—“it is the result of open, deliberate decisions by prime ministers since Theresa May”.
- Andrew Adonis repostedAllowing Putin to dismember Ukraine would create a new Berlin Wall dividing Europe—and threaten UK security and democracy, writes @AndrewAdonis.
- I welcome today’s recommendation by the European Commission to open EU accession negotiations with Ukraine. This is a strong and historic step that paves the way to a stronger EU with Ukraine as its member. I thank the EU and personally @vonderleyen for supporting Ukraine on
00:00 - Sunak hasn’t visited Kyiv this year. Let’s hope that absence makes the heart grow fonder, since the going in Ukraine is set only to get tougher if victory against Putin is to be secured. My Prospect column
- Andrew Adonis repostedMy full response to Sunak & critics of HS2 who trashed Britain’s future 🧵 You would think, from Sunak & the media, that HS2 was dead & deserved its fate. But as HS2’s main architect back in 2009/10 I only wish Labour had stayed stayed in office long enough to see it through 1/
- Replying to @Andrew_Adonisboth a new government—& a new cabinet secretary. As in 1916, the new leaders of the state—both the prime minister and the cabinet secretary—have a massive task to rebuild a crippled machine, and it can’t start a moment too soon.
- Replying to @Andrew_Adonisof civil service drive and morale. Case’s failure to stand up for Tom Scholar, the Treasury permanent secretary fired by Liz Truss on her third day in office, was in retrospect an especial low point, signalling the storm to come. So in 2024 there will in all likelihood be
- Replying to @Andrew_Adonisby May/Heywood. Beyond that, Johnson constituted an assault on civil service values and propriety, while Cummings took against many of its top leaders, including Case’s predecessor Mark Sedwill, who left hurriedly in 2020. But not much has improved since Johnson/Cummings in terms
- Replying to @Andrew_Adonisthe machine and its most able people, however reluctantly, to deliver a just-about-workable Brexit under Theresa May. For a time, the civil service leadership void was partially filled by Johnson and Cummings. Together, they completed Brexit—in a far worse way than envisaged
- Replying to @Andrew_AdonisEdward Bridges under Churchill and Robert Armstrong under Thatcher are key examples, driving forward the machine under strong PMs while maintaining its integrity. Here again, Heywood was the last substantive leader of the civil service. And his last great act was to cajole
- Replying to @Andrew_Adonisthe machine running. But where there has been strong central leadership of the civil service—both in delivering for strong prime ministers and in shaping and defending its own structures, ethics and independence under PMs strong and weak—cabinet secretaries have been to the fore.



