The collision between 2 EMR trains last Friday got hardly any media coverage. Instead, most news outlets chose to give wall-to-wall-coverage to Starmer's resignation.
Never mind that the trains involved were busy commuter trains on a high-speed main route to London, at rush hour. Or that it caused the death of one driver and injuries to as many as 162 people, including one of the guards. There are still 53 passengers in hospital, 8 in a critical condition.
Already the Rail Accident Investigation Branch has issued an initial report which points a finger at the driver - saying that he went through a red signal. No railway worker will be surprised by this. It was "blame foretold"!
Behind the claim of "one of the safest railways in the world" are signalling systems dating back to the 1950s and a haphazard system of private contractors, motivated by profit, not safety, currently replacing it - on this very line. Driver to blame? Yes, it would let them all off the hook.
What EMR, Network Rail and the DfT can't hide is the scandalous neglect of the "uninjured" passengers and the walking wounded after the crash - who were left to fend for themselves. It's true the location wasn't easily accessible. Air ambulances had to land in a farmer's field. Road ambulances had to park a few hundred yards away.
But was there any attempt by EMR bosses, the Transport Police (who took charge and "declared it a crime scene), or indeed the DfT - to scramble emergency 4-wheel drive vehicles and urgent extra help for the passengers, in a state of shock, who stumbled bleeding, bandaged and bruised, across the field? They had to call friends and family on their own phones to fetch them. EMR officials didn't even send a coach!
The scenes of this DIY emergency care, says it all about the state of railway, BTP and emergency service disorganisation. Nevertheless they were all effusively praised by MPs in the Commons. Including by Transport Secretary, Heidi Alexander, who was conspicuous by her absence at the crash site, being far more interested in being interviewed about (ex) PM Starmer's plight.
The authorities will play down this crash. But the rest of us will understand its seriousness and what it implies about the state of Britain's out-of-date signalling and its disjointed and belated modernisation-on-the- cheap. If "re-nationalisation" is to remedy any of this, railway workers will have to take control, use our own un-self-interested experts, remove the profit motive entirely and turn railway transport into a safe public service. We can do it - but we'll have to use our industrial muscle!