As with the banking sector, outsourcing appears to be a one-way street: the profits are privatised, but when things go wrong, it is the taxpayer who is expected to clear up the mess and pick up the tab. Given the way so many private sector enterprises are letting us down, the present public backlash seems fully justified. It is as if Karl Marx was right all along: the capitalists are selling the very rope with which they’ll be hanged.
This narrative, as I say, is beguiling. But it is also one with which I strongly disagree. Supporting evidence is not hard to find: the threatened walkout by Border Agency staff the day before the start of the Olympics serves amply to demonstrate just how far privatisation still has to go in stopping this kind of nonsense, and giving Britain the modern, functioning public services it deserves.
