Rail nationalisation would be a disaster

Those who want to bring back British Rail have forgotten how much of a disaster it was, says Max King.

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Please, please don't
(Image credit: Credit: Guy Bell / Alamy Stock Photo)

"Bring back British Rail", read the bumper sticker in a car I walked past along our road recently. I know that people soon became disillusioned with rail privatisation and that a majority say they support renationalisation, oblivious of the reality that Network Rail is already nationalised, but have they really forgotten how awful British Rail was? From the outside, BR was bad enough, but from the inside it was much worse. In the early 1980s, while qualifying as a chartered accountant at what is now KPMG, I spent some time as a junior member of the audit team assigned to British Rail.

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Max King
Investment Writer

Max has an Economics degree from the University of Cambridge and is a chartered accountant. He worked at Investec Asset Management for 12 years, managing multi-asset funds investing in internally and externally managed funds, including investment trusts. This included a fund of investment trusts which grew to £120m+. Max has managed ten investment trusts (winning many awards) and sat on the boards of three trusts – two directorships are still active.

After 39 years in financial services, including 30 as a professional fund manager, Max took semi-retirement in 2017. Max has been a MoneyWeek columnist since 2016 writing about investment funds and more generally on markets online, plus occasional opinion pieces. He also writes for the Investment Trust Handbook each year and has contributed to The Daily Telegraph and other publications. See here for details of current investments held by Max.