Mandelson moves to privatise Royal Mail

Business Secretary Peter Mandelson faced an angry backlash this week after he opened the door for a part-privatisation of the Royal Mail, proposing a partnership with Dutch firm TNT.

"Lord Mandelson faced an angry backlash... after he opened the door for a part-privatisation of the Royal Mail", say Andrew Porter and Jon Swaine in The Daily Telegraph. The Business Secretary agreed with an independent review by Richard Hooper of Ofcom that the delivery service should "forge a strategic minority partnership" with a private company, with the Dutch postal firm TNT in pole position for a deal that could be worth £3bn.

Mandelson's rejection of suggestions that 50,000 postal jobs could be at risk as "wild, alarmist talk", and his claim that the British government was "saving Royal Mail by investing in its future", cut little ice with his party's backbenchers. Left-winger John McDonnell retorted that: "this is a privatisation beyond what even Thatcher achieved. Labour MPs are angry at what will be interpreted by postal workers as a complete betrayal. Gordon Brown should not underestimate the opposition this will unleash among MPs, trade unions, postal workers and communities." And on cue, general secretary of the Communications and Workers Union, Billy Hayes, said that: "what we are seeing here is the nationalisation of the debt and the privatisation of the profits. I find it incredible that at a time when the government has bailed out the British banks it cannot bail out the postal service".

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