Tories are foolishly attacking nationalisation

In a new video, leader of the Tories Kemi Badenoch has unveiled her latest desperate push to remain relevant. The problem is her new plan is to oppose something which enjoys almost universal support from the public:

Starmer, Burnham, Farage, Polanski…These men have one thing in common. They all want nationalisation.

That will mean companies run by politicians but paid for with YOUR money.

There’s only one party that stands against their failed ideas and that’s the Conservatives. pic.twitter.com/vjQmRQ4V7n

— Kemi Badenoch (@KemiBadenoch) May 24, 2026

Enjoy obscurity, Tories!

In her tweet, Badenoch says:

Starmer, Burnham, Farage, Polanski…These men have one thing in common.

This is correct, but the thing they have in common is that they have READ THE ROOM:

Badenoch also said:

That will mean companies run by politicians but paid for with YOUR money.

Sorry, but whose money does she think pays for privatised services?

Is she unfamiliar with the concept of an electric bill?

Does she not know about bus fares?

In the video itself, Badenoch says:

Do you know what it’s like to have the government controlling everything? It is not cool. You think government is bad now and yet you’re saying let’s have the government run all the industries. If you don’t think government is good now, why is it going to be better if you give it more things to do?

So Badenoch – who wants to govern the country with the Tories – is arguing that politicians like her shouldn’t be trusted to govern anything. This is a bold strategy if nothing else!

Badenoch also said:

Why were the water companies privatized in the first place? It’s because when they were nationalised, they weren’t working very well, they were wasteful, they cost a lot of money and they just weren’t very good.

At the end of the day, a water company is just a building with people in it. She’s clearly deluded herself into thinking there’s some sort of business magic which means you can’t run a company for the public good, but if the will is there, it can be done.

The privatisation nightmare

We Own It have provided 10 reasons why privatisation failed:

You don’t have a choice – public services are natural monopolies: “Privatisation was introduced because of a belief in free markets and consumer choice. But public services tend to be what economists call ‘natural monopolies’, or services where competition doesn’t really make sense. For example, when you take the train, you don’t really have a choice about which one to use. There is no real market.“
Waste: “Money from your bills and taxes should go into improving public services. But with privatisation, [shareholders must receive dividends]. Interest rates are higher for private companies than they are for government. (Plus, there are the extra costs of creating and regulating an artificial market.)“.
Cutting corners: “The drive to maximise profit comes into conflict with the need to spend time caring, or spend money to meet people’s needs“.
Cherry picking: “Private companies cherry pick the profitable bits of a service and leave the rest“.
Fragmentation: “When lots of private companies are involved in delivering a public service, this can create a complicated, fragmented system where it’s not always clear who’s doing what. For example, on our railway, different organisations are responsible for managing the track and stations, running trains and leasing trains. This is inefficient and wasteful“.
Wrong incentives: “When private companies run public services, they may not have an incentive to help tackle problems. For example, companies running private prisons will get paid more money if more people are locked up“.
Inadequate regulation: “Often there’s a revolving door between people working for the regulator and people working for the companies they are regulating. For example, Cathryn Ross who was previously the CEO at Ofwat, the water regulator, now works for privatised Thames Water“.
Lack of flexibility: “Councils and government departments are responsible for meeting the needs of the public – but privatisation means less flexibility for changing circumstances. If an outsourcing contract with a private company needs changing, government must pay more to make changes or improvements, add in extras or to opt out“.
Loss of capacity: “Handing over control to private companies weakens the public sector, reducing the skills and people available to provide high quality public services“.
Risk of bailouts: “Public services are vital, they’re not optional extras, and so they are often too big and too important to fail. This means the government stands ready to rescue private companies in their hour of need – we saw this for example with outsourcing firm Carillion, the East Coast railway line, energy retailer Bulb and Thames Water”.

Not the same

Badenoch suggested that Starmer, Burnham, Farage, and Polanski are all the same on nationalisation, but that’s really not the case.

Starmer is nationalising the train operators, but that had already begun under the Tories to an extent, because privatised rail was such a colossal failure that even they couldn’t ignore it. Starmer has refused to renationalise anything else despite once pledging to do so.

Burnham is talking about “stronger public control”, which as we keep pointing out, is not the same thing as renationalisation. He complained when we said this, but as he’s refusing to give a clear idea of what does have planned, he can complain all he likes:

I’m not doing anything of the kind. Just got to be realistic about how quickly it can be done.

— Andy Burnham (@AndyBurnhamGM) May 24, 2026

Farage talked about nationalising British steel. Badenoch weirdly seems to think voters are against this despite strong evidence to the contrary:

Polanski, meanwhile, is actually planning to nationalise public services, so well done him:

Another poll in front of Labour?

We're coming for Reform next!

Time for rent controls, nationalise our public services & protect our NHS.https://t.co/0qbagSvIYp pic.twitter.com/T1LrG77Ohm

— Zack Polanski (@ZackPolanski) March 30, 2026

Anyway, all this aside, we absolutely support the Tories and Badenoch’s decision to make themselves the face of Britain’s most hated catastrophe.

Featured image via Alishia Abodunde (Getty Images) / Heather Diehl (Getty Images)

Tags: Conservative Party nationalisation

Comments 1

D71 says:

2 weeks ago

During my lifetime, which spans the neoliberal era, it’s been a groundhog day. The party political narrative has repeated endlessly. Now sounds like the 80s. However, it wasn’t different prior to the 80s, the same bickering bullshit has been on repeat for decades prior to my lifetime. In the 30s life was made horrendous and poverty stricken for the majority by parliament. That would not have ended had world war two not been created. Key to the post war improvements was the need to rebuild, a smaller pool of possible employees, bosses were on the backfoot. Add anger and trauma, and govt needed to appease an agrieved population. It wasn’t govt benevolence, it was a calculation. And one generation in, the early 70s, they began dismantling it. The faux conflict between labour and the tories played out, labour taking the blame for overspending (as with the 2008 banking crisis), paving the way for Thatcher, the goal of both cabinets of the duopoly. The aim of labour cabinets for decades has been legitimising the tories and never winning, or, on occasions of victory, oops, not delivering. Anyone struggling holding out hope that westminster will help them out doesn’t understand that poverty is structurally caused by that centre of power. Govts are the cause of poverty not its solution. Govt could end poverty now, since it decides the policy context. The far too low minimum wage, hierarchical business structure, regressive taxes, failure to decentralise decisions including money creation, to name a few – all are govt policy. Badenoch’s words coild be from any decade of the last centur5and more. And, as you note, nationalisation isn’t really on any major party’s agenda. Even the Greens will only shift to something akin to a mid-70s Tory vision. I predict that for the remainder of my life, this argument will continue to endlessly repeat, without going anywhere, and UK life for most will continue to decline, and migrants will continue to be blamed, as they have been for many, many decades.