State pretend incompetence

Does anyone have an insight as to why LibDem states pretend to be politically incompetent and as a result, use this feigned incompetence as an excuse to privatise public institutions, or at least, hire the private sector to 'fix' the public sector? For example, the PFI scheme in the UK isn't working as expected; the privatisation of Thames, energy, and Rail, all of which have resulted in increased cost of living with low efficiency.

I don't think there is any pretence. But equally the idea of privatisation does have some weight. In theory, (and note I say in theory) the idea of capitalism is that economic competition drives efficiency and cost savings. We see this in the technology and automotive word perfectly. Lots of companies competing for customers and in doing so innovating new better and cheaper products to entice them to spend their money. Perfect.

Except in the service world and specifically in health, who wants to go with the cheapest bidder? Also, it has been seen time and again the poor procurement in government sees private companies taking the p1ss and over charging whilst offering a bargain basement service in order to maximise profit.

As for utilities - well that is an utter disaster. No competition and no incentive to provide a good service but people have to pay whether they like it or not. They are the ultimate monopolies. Same with rail. Train companies consistently put on poor services with absolutely no come back from passengers of regulators. They are in a world of their own.

Not sure what any of this has to do with Lib Dems though.

I don't think there is any pretence. But equally the idea of privatisation does have some weight. In theory, (and note I say in theory) the idea of capitalism is that economic competition drives efficiency and cost savings. We see this in the technology and automotive word perfectly. Lots of companies competing for customers and in doing so innovating new better and cheaper products to entice them to spend their money. Perfect.

Except in the service world and specifically in health, who wants to go with the cheapest bidder? Also, it has been seen time and again the poor procurement in government sees private companies taking the p1ss and over charging whilst offering a bargain basement service in order to maximise profit.

As for utilities - well that is an utter disaster. No competition and no incentive to provide a good service but people have to pay whether they like it or not. They are the ultimate monopolies. Same with rail. Train companies consistently put on poor services with absolutely no come back from passengers of regulators. They are in a world of their own.

Not sure what any of this has to do with Lib Dems though.

It's important to note the distinction here between privatisation and marketisation.

In things like rail and water what we have seen is privatisation but under a franchise model which means that marketisation is miniminal. Rail franchises do require an auction and committment to funding new stock and the like but in water for example, there appears to be almost no competition due to the structure imposed upon the sector by the state.

I tend to think that utilities statement is broad brush in two areas though..

1) Broadband - While Openreach receives critisism for its links to BT and i'd suggest that a part nationalised transmitter would be best, mobile broadband is arguably a substantial private success and even amongst non-mobile broadband, the sector appears to function pretty well. I'd say the sector should get 7/10.

2) Energy - As much as people hate on the energy sector, there is nothing about the inflationary shock that would not have occured in a non-privatised model. Energy is basically seperated into three with production, wholesale transmission and retail. This broadly works pretty well normally with good levels of compeition in the retail sector and auctions for production rights rarely coming up short at any scale that would worry us.

The reason we were exposed during the current current crisis is essentially that we chose to be a net importer of energy to outsource our climate emmisions. Had government held auctions and provided the required tax incentives, we could have been in a position to avoid this.

My pet annoyance with energy is National Grid which owned by Transco is a private monopoly albeit which one which tries to do its job unlike the water sector.

It gets a 5/10. Not the worst model but ideally i would part nationalise the National Grid and develop a much firmer energy strategy. I'd keep the current structure though.

..

I should add that i want to see the current water franchises torn up and the energy market structure replicated here. We should hold auctions to supply desalination or reservoirs, we should have a 51% publicly owned National Grid Water (or British Grid Water ideally of course) and then we should have retail compeition with every household being metered.

Rail, i am somewhat undecided as to the optimum structure.