The Guardian view on Chris Grayling: part of the problem, not the solution | Editorial
The transport secretary has left a trail of damage wherever he has been in charge. If his career stays on the rails, the government is heading for the buffers
Long before this week it was already a mystery how Chris Grayling had managed to survive in the cabinet for so long. Now the mystery has become a scandal. As justice secretary, Mr Grayling promoted longer prison sentences, the restriction of human rights and the severe reduction of legal aid. He seemed set on forcing large parts of the prison system into privatisation by cutting prison staff numbers. Neither the prison system nor the Ministry of Justice has yet recovered from his tenure.
Now it is the turn of the Department for Transport and Britain’s travelling public to suffer. Yet the only journey that Mr Grayling seems interested in is his own ideological journey from the social democracy he embraced in the 1980s to his dogmatic obsession with privatisation. He has stopped London commuter rail services from coming under the control of Transport for London. He has poured billions of taxpayers’ money into Virgin Trains East Coast in a vain attempt to keep the franchise alive. Now he has presided over the introduction of a new timetable shambles of which our 21st-century train services have not seen the like.
Source: Guardian Transport
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