EMR: Sweeping the multiple failures under the carpet & The politics of change won't ever be found inside the Westminster bubble!

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 But the rest of us will understand its seriousness and what it implies about the state of Britain's out-of-date signalling and its disjointed and belated modernisation-on-the- cheap.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!

The news commentators talk about the "chaos" in government, caused by Starmer's resignation. They point out that Andy Burnham will be the 7th prime minister in 10 years!

    The Financial Times writes, with hypocritical horror, that this is "more PMs than Italy" - known for its contested proportional representation results. But £7 editors know very well that regardless of the storm in the Westminster teacup, profit-making will continue, uninterrupted. If something does worry the profiteers, it's that even more of us might see through their sham democracy!

    Already the biggest "party" in general elections is "abstain". In 2024, far from Starmer winning a "landslide", as everyone keeps repeating, he was voted in by only 20% of the total electorate. It wasn't a pro- Starmer vote, but an anti-Tory vote.

    And by the way, if nearly half of all adults who could have voted, didn't bother, maybe it's because they already knew that governments of whatever political colour, are here to serve the interests of the ruling, capitalist class. And that "Labour" hasn't meant "labour" for many decades, if it ever did...

    PM-in-waiting Burnham says he wants to change all of this. He wants to "end 40 years of neoliberalism". He talks about taking utilities like water back into public hands. But he also wasted no time in reassuring the same bond markets (which he had previously said he didn't want to be "in hock" to), that he'd stick to Rachel Reeves' "strict fiscal rules"...

    Despite all Burnham's attempts to calm the bosses' nerves, the chorus is getting louder against his agenda - before he has even announced it! They are all helpfully informing him that the state's cupboard is bare, and over-borrowed, so he better not have any fine ideas of re-nationalising energy, funding elderly social care, or taking back Thames Water.

    And yes, the Tories and the FT are right. There is no "headroom" for such reforms. Not within a system in constant crisis, which obeys only the law of profit.

    "Non-voting" workers know already that the sewage isn't only in the water, that it's in a political system serving an economy driven by greed. Changing the driver, no matter how "nice" he may be, achieves little or nothing. We need to change the locomotive! It's name is "socialism" and for that, we need a revolution!