The new Labour government wants to nationalise the companies that run the UK’s trains.

FILE PHOTO: A passenger boards a train at Waterloo station in London (Reuters/Toby Melville)

the new Labour government in the United Kingdom She announced on Thursday that she had submitted a draft law to Gradually renationalizing the country’s railway operatorsAs most companies are private, which has been a promise for a long time.

“After years of poor and unacceptable results, the bill is a historic change that makes it easier for the government to return passenger rail services to public ownership,” the government said in a statement.

The Labour Party won the UK general election on 4 July with a landslide majority, after 14 years of Conservative governments.

Your bill proposes Transferring operators to the public domain when concluding private company contractsOr sooner, in the event of mismanagement, to bring them together into a body called ‘Great British Railways’.

With the various contracts in place expiring between now and 2027, it will then be possible to avoid paying compensation to existing operators, according to the government.

The privatization of railway operators was implemented in the mid-1990s under the conservative Prime Minister John MajorHowever, the railway network remains public, and is run by Network Rail.

Four of England’s 14 operators have already returned to public control in recent years due to poor results, but the idea so far has been to run them temporarily before returning to the private sector.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk attends a bilateral meeting in the United Kingdom with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer (Justin Tallis/Reuters)

On the other hand, the new British Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, took advantage of the platform European Political Community Summit (CPE) to present itself to Europe and “relaunch” relations with the continent, especially in the areas of migration and security.

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From day one, Starmer’s Labour Party has wanted to set a new tone for the relationship with the EU. The content may not be entirely different from that of the previous Conservative government, but forms matter in diplomacy and that is where much of the change is taking place.

With a hectic schedule that began on Wednesday evening with a bilateral dinner with his Irish counterpart, Simon HarrisThe head of the executive authority held face-to-face meetings with the leaders of the main Community countries, from the Spanish Pedro Sanchez To German Olaf SchultzPassing by Italy’s Giorgia Meloni.

French President Emmanuel Macron was given special treatment, being invited to dine alone at the same Blenheim Palace – the birthplace of Winston Churchill – that hosted this fourth meeting of the Standing Committee.

Starmer showed a cautious European bent at the opening of the event, promising, for example, that the UK would “never abandon the European Convention on Human Rights”, something his Conservative predecessors had taken seriously.

“The UK and the EU working together are a powerful force for good,” Starmer told the 46 leaders of European countries and institutions gathered at Blenheim Palace, northwest of London.

Given the “storm” brewing over the continent, he called for increased cooperation in order to “renew relations of trust”, because the security of Europeans, in his opinion, is “at stake”.

Having championed his “pragmatic vision” of foreign policy – ​​“I am not guided by ideology,” said this sincerely practical man – he chose to strengthen the UK’s existing alliances and build new ones with other countries.

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