This week every contender for the Labour leadership and deputy leadership signed up to a series of pledges issued by the pressure group We Own It, an organisation established in 2013 to campaign against privatisation and in favour of what it calls ‘21st century public ownership’.
The pledges repeat many of the promises made in Labour’s 2019 manifesto. They include nationalising various public utilities, introducing a publicly-owned broadband infrastructure provider, ending NHS ‘privatisation’, returning all schools to local government control, allowing bus services to again be run by councils, opposing profit-making in the justice system and ending the outsourcing of municipal services. Some of these pledges are less clear than others. For example, no part of the NHS has actually been ‘privatised’ in the sense of patients paying for services, so it’s not clear what ending ‘privatisation’ actually means.
Even so, most of the pledges the candidates signed up to are clear, leading some to conclude that whoever leads Labour after 4 April will be committed to the very Corbynite policies rejected by the electorate at the last election.
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