Much steam and smoke has been generated from the UK's Labour Party camp following the award of the contract for the rather late running Thameslink 2000 project.
The terms and conditions attatched to the bidding process by the former government headed by one Gordon Brown, late of these columns, whose two closest henchmen were Eds Miliband and Balls did not create a level playingfield for British companies. Indeed they favoured other non UK EU bidders. It was no surprise therefore when Germany's Siemens, already a supplier of high quality trains to the UK defeated Canada's Bombardier (European HQ:Berlin) who happen to have an assembly plant at Derby. They won fair and square. Indeed some factors were not taken into account but that was down to Labour's own legal stipulations. Once the bidding parameters and conditions were issued to all parties and they had responded there was no way they could be ammended without risking enormous damages being awarded to whoever produced the best deal under them. Labour know that full well although they seem to be telling the public that it's not true.
The next big contract pending is for Crossrail trains to operate on the route being created between Shenfield in Essex and Maidenhead in Berkshire. It was due to open for bidding on much the same terms in December this year. The government has now announced a delay to the process to enable the conditions to be rewritten so as to give companies with building facilities in the UK an equal chance, but no guarantee, of winning thanks to a broader range of considerations.
One would have thought that would have brought widespread acclaimation from the Opposition. How naive can we get? Not so. Anna Eagle the opposition spokesperson shreiks : " If ministers are now saying it's possible to review the Crossrail contract how do they explain why they have cost British jobs by refusing to do the same for the new Thameslink trains as Labour has repeatedly demanded?"
How does one explain to Ms Eagle and colleagues that it was her party who made it unlikely that Bombardier could win the Thameslink contract and it is the wicked Tories (primarily, though the Lib Dems might be in there somewhere ) who are now enabling them to bid for the next big one on equal terms? Such is the quality of political intervention at the back end of the silly season. With party conference time coming up there are signs that we are in for heavy doses extended silliness and on the part of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition it will no doubt be wrapped in the increasingly boring and yawn inducing packaging of "too much, too soon" at the intellectual end of the arguments and " Cameron and cronies are toffs" at the other. Could we suggest that, far from being too long, the parliamentary holidays are far too short?
