Cannot the operating company and the infrastructure nonetheless be
state-owned?

Indeed but IMU the work performed on it has to be publicly advertised
to the rest of the EU and then awarded to the most suitable (not
necessarily the cheapest) candidate not just to e.g. Mr Millipede's
chosen recipient. Renationalising the infrastructure is probably the
easy part but not the trains using it.

Yep, it’s in the Lisbon treaty, once the competition genie has been
let out of the bottle, whether it be competitive tendering for NHS,
education or railways it can’t go back in.

Under EU rules, the only way the UK government can regain control is
by bidding in the competitive market so created, just like anyone else
and, that’s not the end of it either, they would have to re-bid
periodically as well.

Now remind us again who it was that signed us up to the Lisbon treaty
(whether we like it or not) oh that was Miliband’s ‘can’t win a vote
outside of Kirkcaldy’ best mate Gordon.

Ed Miliband is setting himself up for a great big fall the way he
keeps trying to walk away from the last Labour government, pretending
it had all never happened.

He’s been at it today again, over the Libor banking scandal, which
news reports over the weekend have now implicated the BoE and that’s
perilously close to government err… the one he was in the Treasury
with at the time.

A proper democratic party would have cleansed itself of their
disastrous previous thirteen years in office but then Labour isn’t a
proper democratic party.